RNC chair Michael Steele sorta kinda offers a not-really-maybe apology: If you get on my case, the Dems will have won.
“In life you learn very quickly that you can’t please everyone, but you can certainly make them all mad at you at the same time. And that is a lesson well-learned. It is an opportunity as well because folks have been mad at us in the past and we have learned from that past.”
Yeah, me neither.
Get the details from the speeches at today’s Southern Republican Leadership Conference from Rick Santorum, Haley Barbour and Ron Paul.
We brought you word last month about the arrest of eight members of the so-called Hutaree militia. But one member who managed to get a jump on the feds and get away was 21 year old Joshua Stone, son of militia leader David Stone.
While on the lam, Stone made contact with various other local militia members and with their assistance had everything set for one of those zero to Armageddon in sixty seconds blowouts with a stash of weapons, a barricaded house and a couple of fellow militia types ready to go out in a blaze of glory in a shoot out with the feds. Happily, some steady law enforcement work, helped along by recordings of family members begging Stone to surrender, finally managed to end the standoff without any gunfire or loss of life.
Justin Elliott brings us the latest on the story.
A truly shocking story. A plane carrying the President of Poland and numerous other high-ranking government officials has crashed in Russia killing all on board. A total of 96 have reportedly died. Ironically, the delegation was en route to attend a joint Polish-Russian commemoration of the Katyn Massacre. Read more here.
From an article on Connecticut GOP senate candidate Linda McMahon, just out from The Day …
In December 1989, as federal investigators were zeroing in on a Pennsylvania doctor who would soon be convicted of selling steroids to professional wrestlers, Linda McMahon sent a confidential memo to a fellow executive at Titan Sports, the family company that operated what was then known as the World Wrestling Federation.
The WWF, she wrote, should alert Dr. George T. Zahorian III that a criminal investigation could be heading his way, according to court documents reviewed by The Day.
Read the rest here.
Charlie Crist releases super weak quarterly fundraising numbers: a mere $1.1 million.
That’s compared to $3.6 million by Marco Rubio and $2 million for Crist in the last quarter of 2009. And that was down for Crist from 3rd quarter 2009, when he raised $2.4 million.
The numbers are really bad. But they’re even worse when you consider that being a master fundraiser was always one of Crist’s biggest strengths as a politician.
Is this what’s coming? Sen. Sessions (R-AL), ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, seems to be signaling that the alleged constitutional questions about the Health Care Reform bill will be a prime focus of President Obama’s nominee’s confirmation hearing.
At New Orleans GOP confab, Bobby Jindal tells RNC staffers probably better to steer clear of Bourbon Street. See the video.
The AP has another exclusive on Pope Benedict’s role in the decision not to defrock pedophile priest Rev. Stephen Kiesle back in the mid-1980s. This new instance seems to tie Benedict much closer to the decision making than other cases.
