After our story earlier in the week on anti-mosque protests in several parts of the country, we got a bunch of reader emails about yet more instances of anti-mosque fervor in their communities. The more we’ve looked into, the more cases we’ve found of Muslim-bashing xenophobia manifesting itself in local zoning and land use disputes. So we’ve taken a second bite at the apple and run down all the similar cases out there.
Christina Bellantoni reports on MSNBC’s Ed Schultz’s Obama-ripping speech during last night’s Netroots Nation kickoff.
Yesterday I issued a new editorial edict at TPM: every story must somehow squeeze in the phrase “Big Mexican Women” — referred to around the office using the acronym BMW. If that is as offensive to you as it probably is, get a load of this Fox News account of those Afghan trainees who are allegedly AWOL from an air force base in Texas. We’ve been calling around down there to see what we could confirm — or not. You truly can’t make this stuff up — or can you?
South Carolina Democrats deserve some serious mocking for winding up with Alvin Greene as their Senate nominee, but mocking Greene himself has made me uncomfortable. From the moment he stepped on the national stage, you got the sense that things just weren’t right with him. Now the AP has obtained some of Greene’s service records from the Air Force, including a performance review which found that Greene was “unable to express thoughts clearly” and “not able to adapt to any changes to daily routine.” Greene was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 2005 but later joined the Army.
Kansas newspaper withdraws its endorsement of Republican candidate for Congress after learning he’s a birther.
The investigation of Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) by the House Ethics Committee has entered a new stage. The subcommittee doing the investigating has now referred charges against Rangel to a separate adjudicatory subcommittee which will rule on whether violations occurred. More soon …
Christina Bellantoni has landed in Las Vegas where she’ll be covering all the goings on associated with Netroots Nation from today through Saturday. Because it’s an election year, Markos’ event will draw a lot of candidates and campaign types, and Christina will be talking with them, doing video interviews, and tweeting updates through the weekend. Conveniently NN is in Nevada this year, where Harry Reid’s reelection bid against Sharron Angle is one of the headline races of 2010. In addition, conservatives are once again staging a counter-NN event. So a lot going on, which is why we have Christina on the ground. You can follow all of her reporting over the next three days on the live updating page we’ve set up. Christina’s tweets and links to her posts, video, and other news will appear there first. So bookmark it and follow everything at Netroots Nation in one spot.
Sens. Reid and Kerry confirm that climate change legislation — which assumed room temperature about six months ago and has been stinking up the place all summer — is in fact dead.
Pics from yesterday’s debut of the power tea partying set:
Unfortunately the debut wasn’t without its hiccups.