Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt explain why retooling our carbon-based energy sector for clean growth can spur the kind of investment and job growth that we saw in the telecom industry after the market opening of the early 1990s.
On Good Morning America today, Gibbs took apart former Rep. Eric Massa’s claims that Democrats pushed him out over health care reform. It’s good stuff:
George, let’s go through what we’ve heard from Congressman Massa. On Wednesday, he was having a recurrence of cancer. On Thursday he was guilty of using salty language. On Friday we learned he’s before the ethics committee to be investigated on charges of sexual harassment.
Video here.
New York has become political scandal central. A look at the state’s remarkable recent run:
The President holds a late afternoon meeting with senators from both parties to discuss energy policy. That and the day’s other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
We’ve been trying to get members of Congress on the record on whether they support Rep. Ryan’s plan to privatize Social Security and phase out Medicare. And while it’s pretty clear a lot of them like Ryan’s budget plan, it’s awfully difficult getting many Republicans to say one way or another whether they support it. But you can’t say that about Angela McGlowan, Republican candidate in Mississippi’s 1st congressional district.
She’s running to “fulfill President Bush’s vision for Social Security.”
I wonder if that’s going to catch on.
Not quite that bad. But close.
Said senate campaign committee chair John Cornyn this morning about his earlier endorsement of Charlie Crist: “I’m not going to do anything to change that. I think I’m honor-bound to leave it as it is. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be spending any money in the primary or saying anything bad about Marco Rubio.”
As I noted last night, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) has now accused House Democrats of whipping up the sexual harassment charge to force him out of the House to pave the way for passing Health Care Reform. He directly accused Steny Hoyer of lying. And Hoyer has now flatly denied it. (It does seem clear that Hoyer never even said what Massa claimed he did.)
But the most surreal part of Massa’s lengthy radio monologue over the weekend was his tour d’horizon of frat boy antics during his career in the Navy. And one case of what seems to have been an earlier accusation of an improper advance during his Navy days. To put it as antiseptically and briefly as possible, Massa says he walked in on a bunkmate masturbating and jocularly offered to help him. This apparently led to a misunderstanding and the bunkmate requesting different quarters.
Each of these incidents alone make sense. But even in Massa’s recounting they do paint a picture of a guy with a history of really unfortunate misunderstandings of joking sexual remarks.
The whole thing is starting to remind me of this classic Onion piece.
The history of gay politicians fighting as tribunes of homophobia and prejudice is so long and twisted and sad and awful that I don’t really think I’m in any position to judge. But I’ll give credit to state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield), the anti-gay rights Republican who got picked up last week on a DUI after leaving a gay nightspot in Sacramento, for not pulling a Craig or a Haggard.
“I’m gay,” he told a radio interviewer this morning. “Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long.”
He explained his past voting record saying that’s what his conservative constituents wanted.