Jeb Bush on GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed entitlement-slashing, deficit-exploding budget “plan”:
He’s not saying the world’s going to be full of butterscotch sundaes. He’s saying: “Eat your broccoli. And then maybe you don’t get to eat at all for a few days. You don’t get steak — ever.”
That’s the spirit!
Some reader reactions to The Dukester’s conversion to prison reformer.
TPM Reader JH:
Well, you folks have certainly heard most political cliches, but I got this one from a friend from Alabama: “There’s no Democrat like a Republican that’s been to prison.”
Duke seems to be living it. Hopefully not too large.
NY pols at the highest levels turnout big time for Charlie Rangel’s combo 80th birthday party and fundraiser.
The Imam at the center of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ controversy was recruited by the Bush administration to travel abroad as an example of pluralist, moderate Islam as practiced in the United States.
Remember Randy “Duke” Cunningham? The guy who sort of kicked off the late, baroque scandal-era of the GOP ascendency with his boffo corruption scandal (he had actually prepared a menu for what contracts he might offer in exchange for which bribes) in mid-2005? Well, it sounds like half a decade in the can has turned Cunningham into something of a prison reform activist. Says Cunningham …
The USA has more prisoners than any other nation, including Russian & China. The US Attorneys win 98% of their cases and if you do not plead in which 80-90% is not true they threaten your wife children etc with prison time … Maybe that’s why God put me here to bring about much needed prison reform. Millions of prisoners but 4x that in families are harmed.”
Never much of a grammarian. But prison seems to have changed the guy.
Minnesota Republicans tear into newly nominated Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton with a slew of less than flattering press clippings from his days in the Senate.
The jury in the corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been deliberating for 11 days now. This afternoon, there is increased activity around the courthouse, according to reporters on the scene in Chicago. It’s not clear whether a verdict is in or whether a note from jury, the first in a week, indicates a deadlock, or whether something else entirely is afoot. Stay tuned …
Late Update: So here’s the deal: The note from the jury said they were deadlocked on some of the charges. The judge ordered them to continue deliberating.
In his new article, Jeff Goldberg rates Israel’s chances of launching a unilateral attack on Iran at now above 50%- 50%. Steve Clemons looks at Goldberg’s argument and what’s to come.
Speaking yesterday on CNN PA Senate candidate Pat Toomey said he’s so hardcore against government spending he actually led a filibuster … on the House floor, um … where there’s no such thing as a filibuster. They only do that in the Senate.
What was sort of weird on this one is that our reporter Megan Carpentier rung up the Toomey campaign. And rather than saying he misspoke or something like that, they insisted that they’ve been calling what Toomey did a filibuster for a long time. So basically they’ve created their own little Toomey-world in which this really was a filibuster. And we should respect their indigenous Toomey culture and not try to impose our Western, journalistic norms on it.
Viva Toomistas!!
A new poll shows that 68% of Americans nationwide oppose the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”.
But top social conservative Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association says no more mosques.
At all.
Anywhere.
On the AFA’s website Fischer says no more mosques should be built in the United States at all.