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Dave Weigel just resigned. He provided fair and accurate coverage for the Washington Post, but because he said something obnoxious on a private email list after Drudge sent hundreds of screaming wingnuts after him and the DC Examiner printed the name and workplace of his girlfriend, he was forced out. Not because of any of his professional work, but because of a couple intemperate remarks on an allegedly private listserv.Actually, as far as I’m concerned, Weigel has grounds to sue, though I have a feeling he’ll be snapped up quickly by some legitimate news organization in the meantime…hope so anyway (and as Keith Olbermann told us tonight on “Countdown,” Tucker Carlson was involved – by the way, Huffington Post called, Tucker; it took a look at “The Daily Caller” and wants its front page back).
Bill Kristol, Jackson Diehl, Marc Thiessen, whose far more offensive comments are printed on the opinion page every week, still have jobs.
I hope they find out who leaked the emails and his/her career is equally damaged. This is a disgrace.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
HouseAt least Mike Castle managed to do the right thing here – please spare me the pabulum about how the Repug Party supposedly gives a damn about small business after votes like this.
Small-business credit. Voting 241-182, the House authorized the Treasury to lend up to $30 billion to community and regional banks to leverage up to $300 billion in new credit for small businesses. As collateral, the Treasury would receive dividend-paying preferred stock redeemable within 10 years. Financial institutions with assets under $10 billion would be eligible for the program. The deficit-neutral bill (HR 5297) is now before the Senate.
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
Voting yes: John Adler (D., N.J.), Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), and Joe Sestak (D., Pa.).
Voting no: Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).
Small-business investment. Voting 247-170, the House passed a deficit-neutral bill (HR 5486) that uses incentives such as nontaxation of capital gains and the waiver of certain Internal Revenue Service penalties to stimulate small-business growth. In part, the bill eliminates capital-gains taxes on the sale of certain small-business stock bought between March 15, 2010, and Jan. 1, 2012, increases deductions for start-up expenditures, and eases rules for deducting losses from investments in enterprises such as farming and energy exploration. The bill is now before the Senate.So Charlie Dent joins Castle among the "Repug enlightened," with Gerlach, Pitts and Smith particularly clueless (and I thought LoBiondo was smarter than this – more fool me, I guess).
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
Voting yes: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Castle, Dent, Fattah, Holden, Murphy, Schwartz, and Sestak.
Voting no: Gerlach, LoBiondo, Pitts, and Smith.
Health-care mandate. Voting 187-230, the House defeated a GOP bid to use HR 5486 (above) as a vehicle for repealing the new health law's requirement that individuals who can afford it obtain medical insurance either at work or in a state-run exchange. The purpose of the individual mandate is to hold down everybody's health costs by establishing the largest possible pool of insured people. Critics say the mandate is oppressive because those without coverage will face financial penalties. Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.) said that eliminating the requirement would increase middle-class premiums because "when a person goes to the emergency room and doesn't have health insurance, they get health care. The question is who pays the bill."Tim Holden continues to be utterly awful; if he manages to go down this fall (to say nothing of other “corpocrat” Dems, it will be over votes exactly like this…an Inquirer commenter objected to the analysis from Rob Andrews on this, even though Andrews is exactly right as to why the individual mandate is important...and let's not forget, to do something about Pancake Joe, click here).
A yes vote was to repeal the individual mandate.
Voting yes: Castle, Dent, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Pitts, and Smith.
Voting no: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Fattah, Murphy, Schwartz, and Sestak.
On a hot Tuesday in a campaign that's set to sizzle, (Dem U.S. House Rep Patrick) Murphy had veterans with him at the Bristol Wharf as he ripped (Repug challenger Mike) Fitzpatrick for voting against a bill in 2005 that would have protected veterans from bankruptcy. Murphy said Fitzpatrick took the side of credit card companies and big banks "against basic protection for veterans."Here is a post with more details on the bill Fitzpatrick voted against, by the way, including the roll-call vote from April 2006. And since Fitzpatrick doesn’t provide more details on this bill be supposedly voted for to “to protect low-income and disabled veterans,” I’m not going to do his homework for him.
The legislation, Murphy said, would have exempted veterans from bankruptcy means tests while they are deployed and for two years following active duty, allowing them to transition back to civilian life.
Fitzpatrick tells a different story. He said he voted for a bill "to protect low-income and disabled veterans. That was important to me. It was achieved."
Injuries are not always physical, though. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that one in three troops returning from Iraq will seek counseling within a year, though most believe the number may actually be higher.The prior post also tells us that, under Mikey’s congressional “oversight,” our vets seeking help from the VA needed duct tape to hold their prosthetic limbs together.
Already, those with serious mental-health needs are being turned away because of underfunding. The result will prove to be the same as it was with the Vietnam veterans - many will be unable to cope with the transition back to civilian life and become drug addicts, alcoholics, homeless, or worse - suicidal.
IN THE PAST few years, there have been plenty of votes in Congress that might not completely solve the problem, but would go a long way toward giving veterans the care they need and deserve.
Both (former) Reps. Fitzpatrick and ("Crazy Curt") Weldon repeatedly voted no on helping these 21st-century patriots. They voted no on a bill to extend the military health care program to members of the National Guard and reserves, on an amendment that would have increased funding for VA services by $2.6 billion, and another that would have increased funding by $3.1 billion.
The latest evidence is a new survey from pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff for the Wall Street Journal and NBC. The number of people who say the country is headed in the wrong direction is 62 percent -- the highest it has been since the final days of George W. Bush. The troubled economy, of course, is the most important issue, and 66 percent say they expect the economy to stay the same or get worse in the next year.Could Obama’s numbers be better? Sure. However, his predecessor would have killed for a 45 percent approval rating in his final days, just to remind everyone (and what does anyone expect a Republican pollster to say, by the way?).
"There is a sense across the board that things aren't working," says Republican pollster David Winston.
Obama's approval rating is at 45 percent, versus 48 percent disapproval -- the first time the president has ever been underwater in the Journal poll.
...digging deeper, beyond the national numbers, reveals at least a few glimmers of hope for Democrats — still fairly distant and faint, but bright enough to get campaign strategists scanning the horizon and weighing the odds.As the party in power during a congressional midterm election, it is practically inevitable that the Dems are going to take a hit.
That is because different parts of the country are recovering at different rates — and, in a bit of electoral good luck for the Democrats, some of the areas that are beginning to edge upward more quickly, like parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, happen to be in important battlegrounds for the House and the Senate.
“A lot of the trend lines are turning positive in many of these contested areas,” said Mark Zandi, a chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “It really boils down to: Is there enough time for the trend lines to trump the still pretty difficult conditions in the minds of the voters?”
…
The Times has identified 114 House seats and 17 Senate seats that are expected to be the most competitive in November. The largest numbers of closely contested elections are expected to be in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, where The Times projects a combined 26 competitive House races.
All three states, coincidentally, are considered to be on the leading edge of the nation’s recovery. Since December, they have added jobs at a faster rate than the country as a whole and even led the country in the total number of jobs added in April. One reason is that manufacturing, a traditional backbone, has been on the rebound; another is that these states generally did not suffer as acutely as other regions from the housing boom and bust.
While much attention has been paid to the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, political scientists have found little correlation between that measure and midterm elections results. Instead, they have found more broad-based indicators, particularly real personal disposable per capita income, which measures the amount of money a household has after taxes and inflation, to be better gauges.
A residents group can continue its legal fight against a proposed Aria Health hospital at Route 332 and Stony Hill Road in Lower Makefield, a Bucks County Court judge has ruled.The last I checked, the majority of the Lower Makefield supervisors opposed the relocation of Frankford from Middletown Township (near Sesame Place and the Oxford Valley Mall) to the location across from Stony Brook Farm), though Frankford (oh, excuse me…Aria Health) has thus far managed to sway a majority of the members of the LMT zoning board (a lot more info can be found on this here).
Judge Clyde Waite recently issued an order denying the motion by Aria Health, formerly Frankford Hospital, to quash an appeal filed by Residents Against Frankford's Relocation to the granting of a special exception by the township zoning hearing board for the hospital.
Waite's ruling is a preliminary one that keeps RAFR a player but doesn't decide the main issue of whether the hospital can be built, officials said.
The Boy Scouts can stay.I’m sure Christine Flowers is writing her “nyaah, nyaah, told you so” column as I type this.
After deliberating for about seven hours, a federal jury found yesterday that the city violated the local Boy Scouts' First Amendment rights by demanding that they repudiate the national organization's ban on gay membership or face eviction from their Center City headquarters.
The local chapter, called Cradle of Liberty Council, built the 1928 Beaux Arts structure on city-owned land at 22nd and Winter streets, near Logan Square, and has maintained it since. Like other nonprofits that lease property in Fairmount Park, Cradle pays $1 a year to the city.
The city contended at trial that Cradle had to abide by the city's anti-discrimination laws if it wanted to retain the lease.
Attorneys for the local chapter hailed the jury's decision.
"We expect to get an injunction from the court," said attorney Jason P. Gosselin. "We've asked for a permanent injunction from trying to evict the Scouts because of the city's opposition to the leadership policy."
That means that Cradle likely will maintain its cheap lease.
Take a good, long, hard look at what New Jersey is going through right now…And by the way, to help Fitzpatrick’s opponent in the PA-08 U.S. House contest, click here.Bucks Commissioners Urged to Abolish Policy of Taking Taxpayer-Funded Pay Raises While Increasing Taxes
Marseglia Proposal Would Demonstrate Fiscal Responsibility yet Cawley and Martin Refuse to Sign On
(Doylestown, PA) – Earlier this week, Bucks County's Democratic County Commissioner Diane Marseglia challenged her colleagues to establish a policy of prohibiting any pay raises for themselves in years when county taxes are raised by the commissioners. Her Republican colleagues failed to join her call for reform.
A quick review of the tenure of former Bucks County Commissioner Mike Fitzpatrick reveals why Commissioners Martin and Cawley might prefer that the issue simply go away.
While in office, Mike Fitzpatrick gave himself a $23,667 pay raise – an increase of over 45% - while simultaneously raising Bucks County Property Taxes nearly 60%.
In six different years, Mike Fitzpatrick squeezed Bucks County families’ budgets with higher taxes while padding his own pocket – at taxpayer expense.1997: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 6.7% yet gave himself a $2,699 pay raise. 1998: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 3.6% yet gave himself a $2,833 pay raise. 2001: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 3.5% yet gave himself a $1,930 pay raise. 2002: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 5.1% yet gave himself a $1,988 pay raise. 2003: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 4.8% yet gave himself a $2,048 pay raise. 2004: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 14.6% yet gave himself a $4,751 pay raise.
Under Marseglia’s proposal, County Commissioners would forgo salary increases during years when there is a county property tax increase.
The Bucks County Democratic Committee supports Commissioner Marseglia’s leadership and supports enacting her proposal. We call on the Republican Commissioners to end the policy that allowed Fitzpatrick to take a massive pay raise while increasing county property taxes by a staggering 60%.
At issue was a film produced by Citizens United that attacked the public record of Hillary Clinton. The McCain-Feingold law says that such communications are unlawful contributions.(“…such communications are unlawful contributions.” – WHAAA???)
Kagan was asked if, instead of making a movie, Citizens United had published a book criticizing Hillary Clinton and it hit the stands less than sixty days before an election? Could the government ban that book? Yes, she said, representing the Obama administration.
Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell boasted of helping "deliver" Ohio for President Bush and said he was "truly pleased" to announce Bush had won Ohio even before all of the state's votes had been counted in his own fundraising letter, RAW STORY has discovered. The letter, which was received by a Butler County resident Dec. 31, is a plea to support Blackwell's campaign for governor. The resident has asked to remain anonymous.And as noted here…
In apparent disregard for his nonpartisan role as Ohio's chief election official, the Republican Secretary and chairman of Bush's Ohio reelection campaign slammed Senator Kerry as a "disaster" who would have reaped "terrible" and "horrible" results on both Ohio and the United States.
Further, Blackwell's use of the word "deliver" finds striking resonance with another controversial fundraising letter sent by the CEO of voting machine manufacturer Diebold Walden O'Dell in the summer of 2003 when he said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Every significant decision that Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell made regarding the 2004 presidential election benefited George W. Bush. Blackwell was honorary co-chair of Bush's 2004 Ohio campaign and served as an election expert in the Florida fiasco that ensued after the 2000 campaign, spinning the Bush campaign's case to the media.Given this, it’s oddly appropriate that Blackwell begins his Daily Caller column with a reference to theft.
The problem with “When We Go Upon the Sea” is not that it’s yet another derisive play about George W. Bush. Nor is it that the playwright Lee Blessing (“A Walk in the Woods,” “Cobb”) offers a liberal fantasy of Mr. Bush on trial for war crimes. The real trouble, dramatically speaking, is that this Bush character (played by Conan McCarty, with perfect squinting eyes) doesn’t do anything of interest. He doesn’t engage in soul-searching or in an elaborate defense of his presidency — or anything else that might cause much conflict. He just generally acts smug.(Yep, sounds like "art imitating life.")
