With Rahm leaving, I imagine a lot of people in Washington will start to open up about his tenure as chief of staff, both for good and ill. At a DC breakfast this morning with reporters, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius offered some insight into what it’s like working for Rahm — and denied he was responsible for killing the public option.
In case you missed it, the extraordinary video of thuggish New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino threatening a New York Post bureau chief yesterday.
Actually, they never really went away.
Between elections the vast right-wing “vote fraud” fear machine has been overhauled, fine-tuned, and re-calibrated. And now it’s gearing up for the midterm elections.
TPMmuckraker has the story.
Our reporter on the Islamophobia beat, Rachel Slajda, had a piece today on the on-going nonsensefest of Frank Gaffney. After appearing yesterday in that courtroom in Tennessee as a expert on Sharia law (who actually says he’s not an expert but “talked a lot about [it] as a threat.”) he went on Anderson Cooper’s show along with a former Pakistani diplomat who now teaches at American University and basically got made a complete fool of.
A lawyer in the office of Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox runs a blog on the side dedicated to attacking the openly gay student body president at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Cox’s office says it can’t do anything about it because the lawyer, Andrew Shirvell, is protected by state civil service laws, but admits “his immaturity and lack of judgment outside the office are clear.” Shirvell took his crusade against the “radical homosexual agenda” to Anderson Cooper’s show. Take a look.
Who could have imagined that this would happen with an upstanding guy like Carl Paladino, Republican nominee for Governor of the State of New York.
Paladino had a confrontation tonight with New York Post state capital editor Fred Dicker. Dicker asked Paladino on what basis he claimed that Andrew Cuomo had cheated on his ex-wife, a claim for which Paladino appeared to put forward no evidence whatsoever. At that point things got heated and Paladino started yelling and seemed to threaten Dicker in a way I’ll let you interpret for yourself.
What seemed to trigger Paladino’s accusation against Cuomo was renewed attention to his own daughter with a woman other than his wife — something that’s been public for some time. Paladino went back to the controversy over the out-of-wedlock daughter. According to the Daily News, Paladino said: “I want to know why you sent your goons after my daughter, Fred. You send another goon to my daughter’s house and I’ll take you out, buddy!”
As you can imagine, once the candidate for governor of our wonderful state went for the ‘Ill take you out’ phraseology, things got pretty heated. And Paladino spokesman Michael Caputo had to break the two up.
Video of the incident after the jump. Read More
Miss any of the campaign news today as we begin the countdown to the midterm elections? Check out the new TPM Midterms Wire, where you can peruse the day’s developments or wallow in the mudslinging. Your choice.
It was overshadowed by the Gloria Allred press conference accusing GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman of nine years of financial and emotional abuse of her maid, an illegal immigrant, but Sen. Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina actually held a debate today in the U.S. Senate race.
Rachel Slajda takes a closer look at the gang of conservative activists in on James O’Keefe’s latest failed scheme, this one involving a CNN investigative reporter.