One nation under God. The "bold conservative" GOP Congressman Paul Broun from Georgia is intent upon removing a vexing comma from that phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance, which was amended in 1954 when President Eisenhower was moved by a sermon by one Reverend George M. Docherty on the need to defend America from the "militantly atheistic communism that has already enslaved 800 million of the peoples of the earth, and now menaces the rest of the free world."
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

Pat Robertson Endorses Giuliani for President Back in mid-2001, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani was busy committing adultery, lurching into his divorce and third marriage and rooming with a gay couple he promised to marry as soon as the law allowed, who among us would have imagined that one day he would be endorsed for president by Pat Robertson? Truly, Sept. 11 changed everything. Odd though this may be, it raises the question of what an endorsement actually means.
posted on Nov 8, 2007 - View this thread

Closeted gay GOP elected official with an anti-gay voting record #756,394 --(Special Halloween Edition!) GOP Washington State Representative Richard Curtis says he’s not gay, but police reports and court records indicate the Republican lawmaker from southwestern Washington dressed up in women’s lingerie and met a Medical Lake man in a local erotic video store which led to consensual sex at a downtown hotel and a threat to expose Curtis’ activities publicly…. He resigned today.--Curtis is the third conservative lawmaker in just as many months to resign amid allegations of soliciting gay sex.
Bubbling up--and being sat on--by the DC Press Corps is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate.
posted on Oct 31, 2007 - View this thread

"I want those two minutes of my life back." Musique concrète Fred Thompson-style -- a merciless videohack of the candidate's performance at the GOP debate on MSNBC, October 9, 2007. While almost anyone can be made to look foolish edited this way, not everyone was impressed by Thompson's unedited presence at the debate, his TV debut as a presidential contender. Some believe, however, that the former Law and Order D.A. is just the man to "restore the Republican Party to Reagan's default settings."
posted on Oct 12, 2007 - View this thread

Late Night Shots is an "invitation-only" social networking site for elite GOP youth of Washington, DC that the late Steve Gilliard mockingly described as "the best and whitest." The Wonkette blog has devoted an entire section to the site that documents Late Night Shots' racism, date rape, anti-Islamic prejudice, and incest with second cousins, at least until Wonkette's editor started getting invited to their parties. The founder of Late Night Shots, Reed Landry, plans to take his networking site to other cities, but even though Wonkette has lost interest, the Washington City Paper has attracted scrutiny to the site again with a juicy new exposé.
posted on Jul 12, 2007 - View this thread

"I do not recall" --meet Lurita Doan, Administrator of the GSA (Our mission is to help other agencies better serve the public by meeting – at best value – their needs for products and services, and to simplify citizen access to government information and services.), and hear about the powerpoint presentation from Rove's office all about electing Republicans in 08 and how her agency should help. Her office supplied it to Congress--but it was just a (GOP) "team-building exercise" and "brown-bag lunch". (YouTube) Read up on the Hatch Act too.
posted on Mar 28, 2007 - View this thread

Politics/PlameFilter: In opening arguments today in the Plame investigation perjury case against Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, the prosecutor portrayed Libby as an agent of a Cheney-driven media offensive. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day came from Libby's attorney, who portrayed his client as a White House-chosen scapegoat for Karl Rove's misdeeds. A conservative reporter saw in Libby's emerging defense a "dramatic split inside the Bush White House." An MSNBC host asked whether this hullabaloo could lead to Cheney's resignation. Background on the case. Liveblogging of today's arguments from an anti-administration perspective.
posted on Jan 23, 2007 - View this thread

Baker to the rescue Is this guy the most powerful lawyer in the world? And he is now beginning not just to advise Bush but also it seems to dump Israel as an ally in favor of giving various Arab and Muslim groups--including our enemies-- what they have long wished for. As for the tiny democracy called Israel, they can have this for their future. Follow the dough (and oil)
posted on Dec 6, 2006 - View this thread

Described as "the View meets the Daily Show and takes a right turn," The America Show, Episode 1 and Episode 2 are pilots that are being floated for possible TV broadcast. Weigh in on their potential. The driving force behind the show is conservative comic Julia Gorin, who also recently launched Political Mavens as "a celebrity-studded conservative answer to Arianna's Huffington Post."
posted on Nov 27, 2006 - View this thread

The Democrats' Sonny Bono? When George Bush used the 1970s Orleans hit, Still the One, as a campaign song in 2004, John Hall issued Bush a cease and desist order for using his song without permission. A founder of the antinuclear group, Musicians United for Safe Energy (best known for the 1979 concert film, No Nukes), Hall decided to run for Congress in upstate New York, winning upset victories this year in both the Democratic primary and the general election against GOP incumbent, Sue Kelly. Before his Congressional victory, Editor & Publisher posted From Soundchecks to Soundbites, an interesting discussion with Hall about music journalism vs. political journalism.
posted on Nov 10, 2006 - View this thread

Meet the next generation of GOP leaders, part 8,493: Justin Zatkoff, Dan Carlson, & Jim Runestad. ... the conservative student Web site Truth Caucus posted photos of his (Zatkoff's) injured face, pronounced the incident a "hate crime,' and speculated it was the work of "liberal thugs.' A Republican organizer in Michigan e-mailed campus Republicans, warning them to travel in groups until the election was over. ... Um, no--Zatkoff was severely beaten by his own friend while both were drunk.
posted on Sep 30, 2006 - View this thread

"Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan." The National Black Republican Association airs a radio ad (mp3).
posted on Sep 24, 2006 - View this thread

Mexico's election: now being recounted, but some are saying it was stolen with our help. Many countries in Latin and South America have been moving to the left lately, following in the footsteps of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile. Argentina actually caught us messing with things during their election, too. Exit polls in Mexico (as in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004) showed a lead for the more leftist (relatively) candidate, and for those who scoff at using exit polls as evidence--in 2004, US Republican Senator Richard Lugar, in Kiev, cited the divergence of exit polls and official polls as solid evidence of “blatant fraud” in the vote count in Ukraine. As a result, the Bush Administration refused to recognize the Ukraine government’s official vote tally. So, honest election, or what?
posted on Jul 3, 2006 - View this thread

the most maritally challenged crop of presidential hopefuls in American political history --meet 3 leading GOP candidates for 08. We've already read about Hillary's sexlife (or lack thereof), but will the double standard hold? ...if the top three Democratic presidential hopefuls each had extra-marital affairs in their backgrounds, it stands to reason that Republicans would have something to say about it--and if the past is any guide, those concerns would find their way into the papers. Will the same happen when it's about the "party of family values and morality"?
posted on Jun 20, 2006 - View this thread

How the GOP Lost Its Way. And they should be worried (pdf) about November, according to Charlie Cook. But don't underestimate the Democrats' propensity to blow it, says the Economist.
posted on Apr 22, 2006 - View this thread

Rollback. Media critic Jay Rosen rises above the McClellan/"shake-up" foofaraw to put several pieces of the puzzle together and show how the Bush administration has significantly altered the long-standing relationship of the press to the White House. (More from Rosen here.) Another piece that fits: Donald Rumsfeld's bold, frequent, and rarely-challenged assertions that the American press is being expertly "manipulated" by Al Qaeda "media committees" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
posted on Apr 20, 2006 - View this thread

Some facts about Latinos and immigration, and chances are good they haven't been mentioned at all during coverage of the "immigration crisis" . (and take a stroll down memory lane to past GOP platform statements on the issue)
posted on Mar 30, 2006 - View this thread

Intrigues at the White House: Andrew Card, Bush's longtime chief of staff -- the guy who briefly interrupted the President's reading of The Pet Goat one rough morning in 2001 and took heat for the Katrina and Dubai debacles -- is out, replaced by budget director "Yosh" Bolten, the one-time founder of a club called "Bikers for Bush." Meanwhile, is Rove rolling over for Patrick Fitzgerald, and if so, what's the angle?
posted on Mar 28, 2006 - View this thread

"Resolved that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, president of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans." Invoking "high crimes and misdemeanors," Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold introduces a motion to censure [PDF link] President Bush for his controversial, legally dubious NSA wiretapping program. Feingold declares: "The President must be held accountable for authorizing a program that clearly violates the law." Republican leader Frist retorts: "It's a crazy political move" that sends a "terrible" signal to Iran. Democratic bloggers say: Call your senator. [More legal fallout from the NSA program recently discussed here.]
posted on Mar 13, 2006 - View this thread

So if you run the CD in your personal computer, by the end of it, the Minnesota GOP will not only know what you think on particular issues, but also who you are. --a cd being sent out to home by the Minnesota GOP is polling people who use the cd, sending their personal info, including name, address, and phone, among other info, back to party headquarters. No privacy policy or statement identifying what the cd does is visible anywhere: ...As far as I could tell, nothing tells you that the answers are about to be e-mailed or otherwise transmitted to the Minnesota GOP. So you finish, and then the phone rings. "Hello, Mr/Mrs. Voters, it's Joe and I notice you support gun control and the marriage amendment, would you like to donate some money to us?" That might startle the person who may have thought he/she was viewing the presentation in the privacy of the computer room. ...
posted on Feb 28, 2006 - View this thread

Ohio Senator: Bar adoptions by the GOP ---In response to Ohio Senator Hood's bill to bar adoption by gays and lesbians, one Senator uses humor to counter hate: ...To further lampoon Hood's bill, Hagan wrote in his mock proposal that ``credible research' shows that adopted children raised in Republican households are more at risk for developing ``emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.' However, Hagan admitted that he has no scientific evidence to support the above claims. Just as ``Hood had no scientific evidence' to back his assertion that having gay parents was detrimental to children, Hagan said. ...
posted on Feb 24, 2006 - View this thread

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald says emails relevant to the Valerie Plame leak investigation have gone missing from the White House. "In an adundance of caution," Fitzgerald wrote [PDF] to "Scooter" Libby's lawyers on January 23, "we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." Might this help explain why Alberto Gonzales -- now the Attorney General, and lately so busy mustering arguments to assert that Bush's NSA domestic-spying program is "legal" -- waited 12 hours before instructing White House staff to preserve documents relevant to the leak investigation after telling Andrew Card about it? Shades of the late, great yoga instructor, Rose Mary Woods. [More on Plame here.]
posted on Feb 1, 2006 - View this thread

Are Conservative Republicans Now America's Permanent Ruling Class?
posted on Jan 18, 2006 - View this thread

Bush in the Bubble. Newsweek's analysis of the man who is possibly "the most isolated president in modern history."
posted on Dec 13, 2005 - View this thread

Invest $50 million of a workers comp trust fund in rare coins and collectibles. Lose some of the coins in the mail. Havoc ensues. Prominent Ohio Republican fundraiser and Bush-Cheney 'pioneer' Thomas Noe is under state scrutiny for $10-12 million in missing funds and subject of a federal probe for potential illegal Bush campaign contributions. Oh, and did I mention his wife Bernadette was chair of the Lucas County Board of Elections during the 2004 election? Suddenly the once-popular donor finds himself a political pariah as heads begin to roll - could this be the tip of an iceberg that will unravel the red state infrastructure? Follow the Toledo Blade's stellar investigative journalism as this story unfolds. Maybe the national media can watch and learn.
posted on May 31, 2005 - View this thread

Frank Luntz GOP Playbook Now Online: No Downloads, Searchable Text I can't stress enough the importance of reading this document. It is absolutely amazing how politicos co-opted so much of our language and led us down the path to THEIR agenda.

Unfortunately, the monstrous PDF file previously available for download made that a 'challenging' endeavor. Thus, I thought it was very important to bring to everybody's attention the existence of an online, readable, searchable, text version of Frank Luntz’s Playbook. It is a masterpiece of manipulation and an historic political document.
posted on Mar 3, 2005 - View this thread

"The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?" Rudy Giuliani blames the troops for the current missing explosives scandal. (340K wmv file). Can we finally stop talking about this hack as a viable candidate for national office?
posted on Oct 28, 2004 - View this thread

Becoming what you hate : Nathan Sproul, case study in moral relativism on the Religious Right "former head of the Arizona Republican Party and of the Arizona Christian Coalition....Sproul is connected with the Republican National Committee-funded voter registration organization, Voters' Outreach of America Inc." - Sproul's firm is accused of fraud and the destruction of voter registration forms. He also failed to pay his workers and his office rent. Rick Perlstein, in the Village Voice, comments on the Sproul scandal : "Both sides are not equally bad, and any reporters who don't recognize that conservatism's very core has become shot through with a culture of mendacity should turn in their press badge..... It used to be that we could count on the conscience of conservatives to protect our democratic institutions."
posted on Oct 22, 2004 - View this thread

CNN's "Undecided" Voter Turns Out To Be A GOP Operative CNN gets duped by Edward Martos. They thought he was an "undecided" voter, but he turned out to be a GOP operative.
posted on Oct 12, 2004 - View this thread

The summer of Republican discontent. The sudden decline and eventual fall of the GOP.
posted on Oct 7, 2004 - View this thread

"Liberals want to ban the bible!" Guess I missed that meeting where "liberals" decided on this.
posted on Sep 25, 2004 - View this thread

The upcoming entertainment lineup for the GOP convention next week is mostly country music, but this article mentions that Stephen Baldwin will be there. Yep, you heard me, a Baldwin. Alec Baldwin was at the DNC last month, and now it's brother vs. brother, Baldwin vs. Baldwin. Remember when you're voting this fall that it's basically a best of the Baldwins contest. You either like Alec, or Stephen, but not both. Now choose your poison Baldwin. [via devoter]
posted on Aug 23, 2004 - View this thread

Urban Guerilla Warfare. The upcoming protests outside the Republican National Convention are becoming less notable for the expected numbers and more notable for the extremes each side will go to. The GOP has decided to blame everything happening outside on the Democratic Party. Liberal groups are feared to be infiltrating the convention's own volunteer staff. And some right-wingers, feeling "compassionate conservatism" means abandoning people in the middle of New York, have taken to pretending to offer housing to out-of-state protestors. Has anyone else started to dismiss the idea of a terrorist attack simply as "too obvious?"
posted on Aug 23, 2004 - View this thread

Is the GOP tampering with Florida elections? The New York Times reports that State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November. Also, see here and here. Why do we even put up with this?
posted on Aug 16, 2004 - View this thread

DontvoteRalph.net "Look at just a few of those who supported Nader in 2000, but see that this year is crucially different: Noam Chomsky, Ben Cohen, Peter Coyote, Phil Donahue, Ronnie Dugger, Jim Hightower, Robert McChesney, Michael Moore, and Bonnie Raitt. In fact, can you think of a prominent supporter from 2000 who supports him in 2004? Are we all members of Nader’s “liberal inteligentsia”? Or is the Bush presidency simply such a disaster that we realize there is only one responsible action for real progressives? Despite Mr. Nader’s inevitable disagreement, we don’t think everyone is out of step but Ralph." | So who is supporting Nader? Some think its the GOP.
posted on Jun 23, 2004 - View this thread

State of the Union scorecard. The president will deliver his State of the Union address on Monday night. Tompaine.com makes it easy to keep score at home. (via TPM)
posted on Jan 17, 2004 - View this thread

Creative Class War: How the GOP's anti-elitism could ruin America's economy. This is an interesting and troubling article by Richard Florida on the possible flight of the American "Creative Class." [Via WorldChanging.]
posted on Jan 14, 2004 - View this thread

Astroturfing gone bad. Why aren't newspaper editors fighting this? They've seen it before. Its one thing to offer a press release and another to ask visitors of the Bush-Cheney website to mail their newspapers the same form letter.
posted on Dec 29, 2003 - View this thread

Politics as usual?...if you're in the mafia, maybe. Pressuring [Republican Congressman] Nick Smith to vote for a Medicare reform bill, House GOP leaders threatened to support candidates running against Smith's son for Congress, Nick Smith said Monday. (via TPM)
posted on Nov 25, 2003 - View this thread

Tom DeLay thinks of the children. The GOP House Leader is attempting to create a charity fund for abused and neglected children. Oh, the fund also pays for "late-night convention parties, a luxury suite during President Bush's speech at Madison Square Garden and yacht cruises" during the 2004 GOP convention. Unlike election funds now restricted by Campaign Finance law, donations to DeLay's semi-charity will be tax-exempt, and of course completely unreported to election officials. (NYT Link)
posted on Nov 14, 2003 - View this thread

I am happy to see that the GOP is expanding their reach to the more eclectic fringes of society. Although it may freak some other people out.
posted on Apr 30, 2003 - View this thread

Political Fratricide: The GOP is reportedly [+] proposing $15 billion of cuts — or is it $25? — in veterans' benefits between now and 2007, and groups like the Veterans Against the Iraq War are hopping mad. Hell, I imagine the pro-war wing is pretty peeved, too. It's part of a plan with delusions of grandeur to deliver massive tax cuts AND kill the deficit ... you know, the one that did not exist before W was elected, as I understand it ... in six years. The original tip is from Stand Down. The actual status of the cuts is nebulous at this point, however, with the SF Chron reporting that they will likely fail in the Senate as the tax cut is halved and others reporting that the die is not yet cast. The House budget resolution, for metafilter accountants who like these things, is here.
posted on Apr 1, 2003 - View this thread

Lott Resigns As GOP Leader. Senator Lott has bowed to internal and external pressure and has resigned his position as Senate majority leader. He will, however, not resign from the Senate altogether. Will Republican be able to recover, or have they been permanently weakened? Will Democrats still be able to capitalize on the scandal?
posted on Dec 20, 2002 - View this thread

The neo-Confederacy movement is a potent force in the Republican Party in today's South, as Trent Lott's comments about Strom Thurmond demonstrate. Trent Lott has neo-Confederate ties, as does John Ashcroft who praised Jefferson Davis in an interview with the Southern Partisan magazine. Associated with the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, adherents of the neo-Confederate movement can even buy T-shirts gloating transforming the Republican Party into Abraham Lincoln's worst nightmare.
posted on Dec 15, 2002 - View this thread

GOP Looks To Move Its Social Agenda. And something you can do about it, if you so inclined.
posted on Dec 4, 2002 - View this thread

Want to talk about GOP? Not in the WSJ! The latest WSJ internal style guide has banned the use of GOP (Grand Old Party) as a reference that too few would be familar with. Republicans seem to find it amusing, considering their domain name, however. I'd just been speaking about this to a colleague a few days ago when someone at lunch asked what a GOP was. Do the other mediums follow suit? Is this as big a deal as some publications using the term "homicide bomber" instead of "suicide bomber?"
posted on Dec 2, 2002 - View this thread

A rush, a push, and the land is ours. Bush enlists government in the GOP campaign. Unprecedented.
posted on Oct 24, 2002 - View this thread

GOP Will Fight GAO Lawsuit. Says Orrin Hatch, "the General Accounting Office, shouldn't be 'trying to impose disclosure on internal White House meetings to determine policy. ... If you have to do that, pretty soon there wouldn't be any meetings.'" This is going to be a tough move to defend come election time.
posted on Jan 30, 2002 - View this thread

Are We Witnessing A Republican Implosion? The Los Angeles Times has three GOP contenders for governor violating Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment by attacking fellow Republicans. In traditionally Republican Virginia, the Washington Post says a Democrat is well on his way to becoming governor next week. In New Hampshire, Roll Call describes what is to be a very bitter primary against an incumbent GOP senator. And finally, the Robert Novak says the GOP is abandoning its candidate for governor in New Jersey. (More Republican News via Political Wire.)
posted on Oct 29, 2001 - View this thread

NYTimes: "How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote" "Their goal was simple: to count the maximum number of overseas ballots in counties won by Mr. Bush, particularly those with a high concentration of military voters, while seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties won by Vice President Al Gore.

A six-month investigation by The New York Times of this chapter in the closest presidential election in American history shows that the Republican effort had a decided impact. Under intense pressure from the Republicans, Florida officials accepted hundreds of overseas absentee ballots that failed to comply with state election laws. "
posted on Jul 14, 2001 - View this thread

McCain considering whether to leave GOP Self-explanatory. Not exactly breaking news, considering that the National Journal reported the same (a tidbit also reported on the Web's Orvetti.com). It is, however, the first time I've seen the "rampant speculation," as journalists like to put it, make for a headline article in a major newspaper. McCain advocate William Kristol may be the person to watch here, since he increasingly seems to advocate a sort-of Teddy Roosevelt-like ideology. Oh, intrigue. Goodie.
posted on Jun 1, 2001 - View this thread

Grand Old Petroleum. GOP. Get it? The DNC really cracks me up sometimes. This is, however, an interesting development in politics. Is every issue going to have its own clever webpage in the future? The mind boggles.
posted on May 17, 2001 - View this thread

Winning isn't enough, it seems. GOP targets Florida Supreme Court Justices...
posted on Jan 9, 2001 - View this thread

GOP Supports Gore! Well, sort of. The GOP Web site was defaced last night with a well-written diatribe about why Bush shouldn't be President.
posted on Nov 7, 2000 - View this thread

The GOP just spammed me. I received an email sent supposedly on behalf of "Jim Nicholson, Chairman, Republican National Committee" inviting me to become an "eChampion":

Once you've registered as an eChampion, you will receive fact-filled e-mails twice a week on the upcoming election, the candidates' stands on issues, etc. Your role as an eChampion is to send these e-mails on to AS MANY friends, neighbors and family members as possible, and invite them to register as eChampions themselves at http://www.echampions2000.com.

No, I didn't opt-in to some Republican mailing list. For a start, I'm Canadian, in Canada, and if I was going to vote for a right-wing wing-nut, it would be Stockwell Day. Talk about "idea viri"...
posted on Oct 10, 2000 - View this thread

Where Are The Hollywood Conservative? Does a liberal cabal of Hollywood executives destroy the careers of conservative performers? Or, is the conservative philosophy (opposed to change, antiquated morals...) just too boring for artists and performers?
posted on Sep 12, 2000 - View this thread