Tag: Conservative Values

Different Day, Same Republican Hypocrisy

Trish

U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, Florida, has a Delay Problem. While he claims a trip to Ireland was not paid for by lobbyists, he also says it doesn’t matter because the House ethics committee approved the trip. Is that like saying your dog never bit your neighbor and the neighbor had it coming anyway?

Palm Beach Post

Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. is one of five members of Congress who reported taking a 2003 trip to Ireland paid by a lobbying organization in violation of House ethics rules…

He said he originally misidentified the sponsor of the trip and plans to file an amended report naming the lobbying firm’s parent company — which is not a lobbying organization — as the actual sponsor.

In any event, he noted, the House ethics committee “signed off” on the trip in advance…

Small wonder that Shaw is doing the DeLay Waltz. The two are pretty tight.

Shaw has received $30,000 from Armpac, a political action committee run by DeLay, during the past three elections, and last fall gave $5,000 to DeLay’s legal fund.

Shaw and four other members of the House and Senate made the trip. Back then, they said it was paid by registered lobbyists Kessler & Associates, which represents Microsoft, Delta, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and other Big Pharma manufacturers.

The lawmakers and several of their wives stayed at the 13th century Ashford Castle, converted into a luxury hotel on 350 acres on the banks of Lough Corrib…

Shaw said he did not know at the time that Kessler was a registered lobbying firm. He listed Kessler as the sponsor because the trip itinerary was on Kessler letterhead stationery, he said.

Shaw said he now believes the sponsor was Century Business Strategies, a Cleveland accounting and consulting firm that is Kessler’s parent company.

All of this might not be so bad, except for the egregious hypocrisy involved. Shaw, after all, is the guy waging war on 527s, which, like the Internets, Democrats figured out how to use first.

An earlier story in the Palm Beach Post reported on Shaw’s full-disclosure initiative.

Shaw and his fellow sponsors of a new bill — Reps. Mark Foley, R-Fla., and Phil English, R-Pa. — said their 527 Transparency Act of 2005 would let Americans know who is behind the political ads on their televisions…

The bill would also provide information to politicians about their supporters, Foley said…

“Let’s find out who is writing the checks.”

Yes, let’s. Especially before we fly off to Ireland with our palms extended.

Preacher Denies Purging Congregation of Democrats

Jon Ponder

Pastor Chan Chandler issued a statement today denying that he expelled nine members of his congregation because they were not Republicans.

“This church fellowships openly with all who embrace the authority and application of the Bible regardless of political affiliation, including current members who align themselves with both major political parties, as well as those who affiliate with no political party.”

The nine people who he kicked out of the church last Monday night directly contradict this statement.

The church members said they were ousted Monday after leaving a business meeting because they could not support Pastor Chan Chandler’s assertion that the church would be a Republican church. One of the members voted out was a Republican…

“Our memberships were terminated because we did not agree to have a political church,” said Thelma Lowe, the lone Republican voted out. “I did not vote for Kerry.”

Chandler is lying now because his actions may have jeopardized his church’s non-profit status. So sayeth the Biblical Recorder:

If indeed Chandler’s pulpit statement was made before the November election and did not indicate he was speaking only for himself, it would be a “pretty clear” violation of Internal Revenue Service rules against political endorsements by churches, said Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC). That could lead the IRS to revoke East Waynesville Baptist Church’s tax-exempt status.

Chandler told the Associated Press that it was all “a great misunderstanding.”

I lived in nearby Canton, a paper mill town on the Pigeon River, when I was in elementary school. The mill emits a stank reminiscent of spoiled egg salad. In the early ’60’s, it routinely dumped yellow foamy waste into the river. By comparison, the pollution here in Los Angeles is barely noticeable.

With a population under 10,000, Waynesville doesn’t even have a putrid smell to put it on the map. At best, it appears to be the Gateway to Maggie Valley. I don’t remember East Waynesville, and couldn’t find it on a map .

It sounds like Pastor Chandler is seriously unhinged but, crazy or not, his actions offer stark proof that theocracy has entered the atmospherics of our time.

GOP Mayor of Spokane, Former State Sen. Majority Leader, Arrested for Molestation

Jon Ponder

The Republican mayor of Spokane, who also served as the Majority leader in the Washington Senate, has been charged with child molestation. Via
Buzzflash, here’s the lede from Editor & Publisher :

After three years of investigation, the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., today presented a package of stories that include allegations of sexual misconduct by the city’s mayor, Jim West [right].

The probe grew out of the paper’s reporting on a sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in 2002. Rumors circulated then that West had sexually molested young boys when he served as a Boy Scout leader (and a sheriff’s deputy) in the late 1970s. Two of his closest friends then, one a sheriff’s deputy and the other a Scout leader, committed suicide after those earlier allegations of sex abuse were raised.

Today, the newspaper revealed that Robert J. Galliher claimed in a court deposition that West molested him in the mid-1970s, when he was a boy. A second man, Michael G. Grant Jr., also accused West of sexual abuse during the same period.

From the Spokane Spokesman-Review:

Through the use of public records, court documents, first-person accounts and a forensic computer expert, the newspaper has uncovered evidence that West has led a secret life for more than 25 years. Beyond the serious allegations of sexual abuse, West had been using his position in the Legislature to block gay-rights legislation. And he has been trolling the Internet for young lovers while while serving as mayor of Spokane, offering gifts and favors.

Another GOP Adulterous Hypocrite: Rep. Sherwood Was in Alleged Long-Term Extramarital Affair When He Voted 2004 ‘Marriage Protection Act’

Jon Ponder

Rep. Don Sherwood, right, who has represented Pennsylvania’s 10th District since 1998, is a wingnut conservative who voted for the 2004 “Marriage Protection Act” at the same time he was allegedly involved in on-going an extra-marital affair with a woman half his age.

The affair came to light when the girlfriend called the DC police claiming that Sherwood assaulted her:

Police responded to a 911 call on Sept. 15 from Cynthia Ore, 29, of Rockville, Md. She locked herself in a bathroom in Sherwood’s D Street apartment and told operators that Sherwood “choked her for no apparent reason” while giving her a backrub.

Sherwood, 64, told police he was giving Ore a backrub when she “jumped up” and ran to the bathroom.

Police said they saw no visible injuries on Ore’s neck, and Ore later backed off her story when questioned by police.

“Both parties have left out significant information or are not willing to discuss in detail what actually happened,” Washington Metropolitan Police stated in the incident report.

Ore said that she and Sherwood, who is married, have had an ongoing relationship since 1999, when the two met at a Young Republicans meeting. Sherwood has refused to specify the nature of their relationship, calling Ore “an acquaintance.”

As an adulterer who voted for a measure that supposedly protects the sanctity of marriage, Rep. Sherwood is in illustrious company. Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich helped move the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) through the House of Representatives in 1996 while simultaneously conducting an adulterous affair with an aide. His counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, left his first wife for another woman, whom he gave a do-nothing job on his Senate staff. Additionally on DOMA, Rep. Bob Barr, who drafted the legislation, has been married three times. Rep. Bob Livingstone, who was tapped to take the Speakership from Gingrich, lost the position when it was revealed he had been involved in multiple kink-filled orgies, to which his wife was not invited, while supporting the GOP “values” agenda.

When asked about the political future for Rep. Sherwood – who allegedly physically abused his girlfriend and appears to be a typical hypocritical adulterous GOP sleazebag – Marge Matisko, an activist with the Luzerne County [PA] Republican Party said: “The congressman is a family man. When I think about family values, I think about the Don Sherwoods and Rick Santorums of the world.”

On that last point, Ms. Matisko, we wholeheartedly agree.

House Blend Has Actual Freeper Quotes™ on Robertson’s Latest Gaffe

Jon Ponder

Every normal American owes Pam Spaulding at Pam’s House Blend a debt of gratitude. She often risks getting slime on her Internets by visiting Freeperville to bring back a dose of buzz from the Dark Side, which she calls Actual Freeper Quotes™.

Here’s a taste of the AFQ in response to Pat Robertson’s statement on Sunday that our constitutionally mandated independent judiciary is a greater threat than Islamic terrorists :

“As much as i like the guy comments like these are over the line. I think the judiciary is a threat, but saying that a bunch of unelected judges are worse than terrorists who want to blow us up is silly. Robertson really should take back what he said.”

“Man oh man..this is SURE to raise the credibility of the Republican Party and conservatives in general. Get a grip, Pat.”

“I’m no fan of Robertson, but the basic hypothesis has some good arguments for it. AQ killed 3000 Americans, judges have killed 40,000,000 and counting.”

“What a stupid thing to say! This will of course be used against the cause of stopping judicial activism. With friends like this, who needs enemies? It’s as bad as the abortionist killers or the Phelps “God hates f**s” people for harming the cause of decency, pro-life, pro-family and judicial restraint.”

“Everyone please pray for Pat!”

“What a stupid thing to say, especially after the Delay fracas. He’s senile and should be replaced.”

“Only difference between Pat Roberts and someone like Paul Crouch is better clothes and smoother delivery. In his heart, he is a bitter little snake-oil salesman, nothing more.”

“He may not have worded it correctly, but I think his premise is not so off. Judges have the potential to take down the country more effectively than the terrorists. Particularly now that Al Queda has been checked. Not to mention that judges have allowed millions of babies to be killed through judicial activism. That is pretty serious stuff.”

Go read the rest….

Gays face same enemy as Jews in ’30s: hatred

Buck Banks

In today’s Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts Jr. examines the au courant tendency to label the crisi dujour as whatever’s “Holocaust.” In this case, it’s a gay holocaust. While drawing the distinction between capital H and little H holocausts, Pitts notes that the tendency of conservatives to want to limit freedoms, especially those of gays and lesbians, does harken back to the neo-fascist days of the late ’30s, early ’40s.

Gay Holocaust?

That was the subject line of an e-mail I received last week from ”Chris,” a lawyer in a red state. He wanted to know if anybody else sees a similarity between the beginning of the Holocaust — the nibbling away of rights and personhood that ultimately led to the attempted extermination of a people — and what is happening to gay people in American right now.

He knows it’s far-fetched. ”But,” he says, speaking of the conservative element that is pushing hardest against gay rights, “we are not dealing with normal people here.”

Chris concedes that there are differences between the plights of Jews and gays. “But they also have this in common — at one time in history, that time being the present for gays, they were the object of official government-sponsored hatred couched in the name of religion or morals.”

Here’s what I think:

The Holocaust is an atrocity unique in history, and I’m wary of appending modifiers: the ”this” holocaust or the ”that” holocaust. There’s a reason the word takes a capital h.

Which is not to say the lawyer is off base. I’ve long felt the current spate of laws — you can’t do this because you’re gay, can’t have that because you’re lesbian — bears a discomfitting resemblance to Germany in the 1930s.

Both spring from a mind-set that says a given people is so loathsome, so offensive to our sensibilities, that we are obliged to place them outside the circle of normal human compassion. We don’t have to hear their cries, don’t have to respect their humanity, don’t have to revere their tears, because they are less than we — and at the same time, are responsible for everything that scares or threatens us.

Whatever it is, it’s all their fault. Blame them, whoever ”them” may be.

WE’RE ALL HUMAN

My problem is that I see human dignity as all of a piece. I don’t know how to want it for me and mine but not for them and theirs. As Martin Luther King Jr. put it, we are caught in a network of mutuality. As Dick Cheney put it, freedom means freedom for everybody. As Cain put it, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

I always considered that the signature lesson of the Holocaust; always felt that in the largest sense, it was not about Jews and Aryans, but about humanity and inhumanity. The Holocaust was, after all, only hatred carried to its logical extreme, the predictable outcome of an environment where we countenance taking rights from ”them,” heaping scorn on ”them,” making scapegoats of “them.”

And who can deny that this describes the plight of gay Americans in 2005? Or that demagogic lawmakers are using this environment to further their own ambitions?

There used to be an expression in Southern politics. The candidate who lost because he had been found insufficiently draconian on racial issues was said to have been ”out-niggered.” These days, the worry seems to be that one might be ”out-homoed.” Consider, for instance, a law under consideration in Alabama to ban books with gay characters from public school libraries.

Books. With gay characters.

AN IMPORTANT QUESTION

It prompted a group of gay Alabamans to rise before a legislative committee and ask a pregnant question.

Why do you hate us?

And it strikes me that the same thing could have been asked by an Armenian in 1915, by a Bosnian Muslim in 1992, by a Rwandan in 1994 and, yes, by a Jew, in 1936.

We just don’t learn.

Ours is a stable and prosperous democracy, so no, I don’t predict train cars full of gays rolling toward death factories.

Still, the mind-set of aggrieved righteousness that allowed those trains to roll is not dissimilar from that which would ban gay people from public school libraries.

Maybe your instinct is to find the comparison unthinkable. Nobody is interning gays, nobody mass-murdering them.

You’re right. But ask yourself: How many would if they could?

Bush-Cheney Ohio Official Investigated for Illegal Contributions

Jon Ponder

Toledo Blade:

The federal probe into whether local Republican fund-raiser Tom Noe, right, was illegally funneling money to the Bush campaign had been ongoing for months. It reached a turning point Wednesday night.

FBI agents swept into Mr. Noe’s Maumee condo about 7:30 p.m., spending three hours scouring the home of one of the most prominent Republicans in northwest Ohio. They were looking for evidence of violations of federal campaign contribution laws…

Mr. Noe, 50, is a coin dealer and former chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party. He manages two rare-coin funds that have received $50 million from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation. That investment arrangement is currently under a separate investigation being conducted by the Ohio inspector general.

Jeb Has Conscience, But Still No Reflection in Mirrors

Trish

Jeb’s looking presidential again. He went to Rome to attend the pope’s inauguration.

Reuters:

Bush, who converted to Catholicism to share the faith of his Mexican-born wife Columba, will lead the U.S. delegation to the inauguration of Pope Benedict on Sunday on behalf of President Bush.

Why do they say “Mexican-born?” Why don’t they just say, “Mexican?” They make it sound as if Florida’s first lady’s parents were on a Mayan cruise when she was born.

And BTW, does Florida pay for this stuff, or the federal government? Can we take it out of the 2008 Republican campaign fund?

Anyway, Jeb admitted to a passing twinge when the last pope slammed Bush-family methods.

Whether it is the war in Iraq or the death penalty, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says he is given “pause” when the policies he and his brother support run against the views of the Roman Catholic Church.

“I get uneasy when the Vatican writes me letters when a death penalty case is about ready to take place in Florida. I’ll be honest with you, that gives me pause. It makes me pray harder,” Bush told reporters in Rome on Saturday.

“But having said that, I think the president’s decision (on Iraq) was the right one,” he added…

Good background info:

Pope John Paul, who died on April 2, sought in vain to avert the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and was a stern and vocal opponent of capital punishment.

Jeb Bush considered postponing an execution earlier this month until after John Paul’s funeral on April 8…

President Bush oversaw the most executions of any U.S. governor in modern history when he was governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. Texas executed 152 people.

The Republican party receives strong support from Christian conservatives and is often allied with the Catholic Church on divisive issues like abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage and euthanasia.

I wonder if Neil Bush was there to see his old pal be sworn in (if that’s what it’s called)? New York Newsday recently reported the two go way back.

Neil Bush, the president’s controversial younger brother, six years ago joined the cardinal who this week became Pope Benedict XVI as a founding board member of a little known Swiss ecumenical foundation.

The charter members of the board were all well-known international religious figures, except for Bush and his close friend and business partner, Jamal Daniel, whose family has extensive holdings in the United States and Switzerland, public records show…

Besides then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, founding board members included Rene-Samuel Sirat, the former chief rabbi of France; Jordan’s Prince Hassan, a Muslim dedicated to religious dialogue; the late Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, another prominent Muslim; Olivier Fatio, director of the Institute of the History of the Reformation; and foundation president Metropolitan Damaskinos, a Greek Orthodox leader.

Gary Vachicouras, a theologian and foundation official in Geneva, would not explain in a telephone interview yesterday why Bush, who has no clear public connection to religious causes, was on the first board.

Probably wants to bring moral values to the world. After all, Neil is a shining example for us all.

In his highly publicized divorce last year, Bush revealed he and Daniel are co-chairs of Texas-based Crest Investment Co., which pays him $60,000 a year for consulting. Recently, Crest Investment officials used Bush’s name as a reference in cutting an exclusive deal with Texas officials on construction of a liquid natural gas storage facility that will guarantee Crest payments of at least $2 million a year, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In the divorce proceedings, Bush also revealed that while he was in a hotel in Asia, women on at least three occasions came into his room and had sex with him. Daniel hosted Bush’s second wedding at his home.

Caught on Tape: Evangelical Leaders Plot Subversion of US Judiciary

Jon Ponder

An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times: has nabbed two leading wingnuts plotting to subvert the federal judiciary via Congressional fiat, chiefly by zeroing out funding for courts whose decisions they and their Constitution-hating supporters don’t like.

The two plotters are Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, and James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. They were caught on tape by a representative of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to take a black robe off the bench,” said Perkins, according to the Times. He also said that he had huddled with Republican congressional leaders recently to plot the the stripping funding from certain courts. “What they’re thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and re-creating them the next day but also defunding them,” Perkins said.

He said that instead of undertaking the long process of trying to impeach judges, Congress could use its appropriations authority to “just take away the bench, all of his staff, and he’s just sitting out there with nothing to do.”…

Dobson, who emerged last year as one of the evangelical movement’s most important political leaders, named one potential target: the California-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court,” Dobson said. “They don’t have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.”

Even poor SpongeBob Squarepants was dragged into the coup plotting:

As part of the discussion, Perkins and Dobson referred to remarks by Dobson earlier this year at a congressional dinner in which he singled out the use by one group of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants in a video that Dobson said promoted a homosexual agenda.

Dobson was ridiculed for his comments, which some critics interpreted to mean the evangelist had determined that the cartoon character was gay.

Dobson said the beating he took in the media, coming after his appearance on the cover of newsmagazines hailing his prominence in Bush’s reelection, proved that the press will only seek to tear him down.

“This will not be the last thing that you read about that makes me look ridiculous,” he said.

From his lips to God’s ears.

Red State Values: SC Legislature Protects Farm Foul, Leaves Battered Wives Vulnerable

Jon Ponder

WIStv.com:

The [South Carolina] State House took up two pieces of legislation this week aimed at protecting two different groups. Up for debate was cracking down on gamecock fighting and protecting victims of domestic violence.

A bill protecting cocks passed through the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. John Graham Altman (R-Dist. 119-Charleston) was in favor of the gamecock bill, “I was all for that. Cockfighting reminds me of the Roman circus, coliseum.”

A bill advocates say would protect victims against batterers was tabled, killing it for the year. Rep. Altman is on the committee that looked at the domestic violence bill, “I think this bill is probably drafted out of an abundance of ignorance.”

Wednesday, Vicki Bourus, an advocate for victims of domestic violence, was inundated with phone calls and e-mail. The people were reacting to Graham Altman’s comments against the bill, “There’s just an outcry going on.”

Both cockfighting and domestic violence are currently misdemeanor crimes, punishable by 30 days in jail. If the bill passes, cockfighting will become a felony, punishable by five years in jail. Domestic violence crimes will remain a misdemeanor.