So Clarence Thomas takes a $15K gift from the AEI, and then rules on three of their cases. No problem there, right?
Category: Scary Crazy Wingnuts
Taking Vitter down
It’s about time somebody did it:
A watchdog group filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee on Tuesday against Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) over allegations that he attempted to “bribe” the Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar.
The complaint, filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), cites a letter that Vitter wrote to Salazar last month. In the letter Vitter said he would continue to oppose increasing Salazar’s paycheck by $19,600 until the secretary issued permits for new exploratory deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
In a five-page letter to committee Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Vice Chairman Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan detailed the allegation of Vitter’s “quid pro quo” and recommended that the committee refer matters to the Justice Department if they found the senator guilty of wrongdoing.
“Our country’s criminal laws apply to everyone, including senators,” said Sloan in the letter. “There is no exception to the bribery law allowing a senator to influence a department secretary’s official acts by withholding compensation.”
Shorter Mitch Daniels
I believe they call this “murder”:
Cease providing a legal service with private money, or we’ll kill some women.
Yep
“Marriage is between one man and one child less than one-third his age.” [Via JoeMyGod.]
The stealth attack on PA
Gov. Tom “Secret Agent Man” Corbett is pursuing many of the same draconian budget and union-busting measures as more high-profile Republican governors, but since he so rarely holds unscripted press conferences or answers questions, I suppose the state’s media gang figures there’s nothing to cover!
Since taking office in January, Gov. Tom Corbett and his allied Republican majorities in the state House and Senate have been guided by two principles as they approach crafting a new budget: no proposal may exceed the $27.3 billion originally proposed by Corbett regardless of specific spending; any revenue derived from the booming natural gas industry must be dedicated to specific purposes rather than deposited in the general fund.
Corbett and legislative leaders view the general fund as a swirling, voracious black hole. Once public money enters the vortex, it is lost forever.
So any new revenue must be put in funds dedicated to specific purposes. Curiously, however, the rule does not seem to apply to existing funds with dedicated revenue streams.
One of the first acts of the administration, with tacit approval from the legislative majorities, was to eliminate state subsidized health insurance coverage for more than 40,000 low-income working adults under the adultBasic program. Instead, the state directed those needy workers to far less affordable skeletal plans offered by private insurances. Far fewer than 10 percent of the newly uninsured workers opted for the private plans, for which premiums range up to 500 percent of the premium under adultBasic.
Yet, a major part of the funding for adultBasic came from a dedicated revenue stream – Pennsylvania’s share of the master settlement that states reached with the tobacco industry. In 2001 the state Legislature passed and Gov. Tom Ridge signed a law creating the Tobacco Settlement fund and dedicating the revenue solely to health-related purposes – including adultBasic.
This year the state is scheduled to receive $315 million in settlement funds. But instead of using the money for the dedicated purposes established by law in 2001, the administration plans to divert some of the fund for other purposes, including $220 million for a business loan fund.
Thou shalt not steal
So Bachmann was playing with House money, huh? I’m sure the same fine media organizations that saw Rep. Weiner punished for his sins will jump right on this. Right?
On Nov. 5, 2009, at the behest of Rep. Michele Bachmann, thousands of tea party activists descended on the Capitol to vent their rage over the health care overhaul bill pending before Congress.
The assembled activists chanted, “Kill the bill! Kill the bill!” and waved signs opposing a government takeover of health care — but they may not have known that the same government was paying for the event.
According to House expense reports, Bachmann and three conservative GOP colleagues — Reps. Tom Price (Ga.), Steve King (Iowa) and Todd Akin (Mo.) — each paid $3,407.50 that day, a total of $13,630, to a sound and stage company called National Events, apparently for the sound system used at the rally.
The money came from the Members’ taxpayer-funded office accounts, despite House rules prohibiting the use of these funds for political activities. Bachmann’s office insists the expense was a proper use of official funds.
Bachmann billed the event as a “press conference,” which can be funded from official accounts. But no questions were taken from the press and, unlike most press conferences, it opened with a prayer, the national anthem and a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
A few days earlier, the Minnesota Republican had appeared on a Fox News talk show and made an appeal for activists to come to D.C. for the event, promising to help them lobby Congress against the bill.
Gee
You don’t suppose the Wisconsin politicians colluded with their Republican Supreme Court members, do you?
Republicans are evil
Let states take the money from their unemployment funds? Let them know how you feel about that.
Pray for rain?
Kiss my ass, Gov. Perry. Really.
The problem
With Santorum’s position that doctors be criminally prosecuted for performing abortions, he’s really saying that the hired gun who performed the homicide be prosecuted, but the person who hired them is actually a victim.
He’s a lawyer, he knows better. And if he knows better, he knows the wives, friends, sisters and mothers will be prosecuted for murder. Gee, I wonder how most people would feel if he put it that way?