One more note on Brian Beutler’s story about Elliott Broidy enlisting Joe Lieberman and Scott Brown in his new pro-intervention advocacy group.
Broidy’s role in the New York state pension scandal was making some $1 million in bribes to pension officials so his investment firm could win some of the lucrative pension business. Some of the Broidy bribes included payments to take care of the rent of the girlfriend of one state official. Because, you know. She happened to be Peggy Lipton, the actress of “Mod Squad” fame who later married Quincy Jones. One of their daughters is actress Rashida Jones, who is known for, among other things, her run on The Office.
All of which goes to say there are five degrees of separation between Joe Lieberman and Michael Scott:
Joe Lieberman -> Elliott Broidy -> Peggy Lipton -> Rashida Jones -> Michael Scott.
Pat Robertson on Anthony Kennedy: “Does he have some clerks that happen to be gays?”
Israeli investor/GOP contributor who pleaded guilty in that big New York state pension scandal sets up new hawkish advocacy group with Joe Lieberman and Scott Brown as honorary co-chairs.
The final vote was 68-32. And now all attentions turns to the House. Brian Beutler reports.
Harry Reid is wrapping up his speech on the Senate floor before the final vote on passage of the immigration reform bill. Voting should begin momentarily. Stay tuned.
John Cassidy has a piece up at The New Yorker, a sort of j’accuse directed at the media for being more critical of Edward Snowden than defending him. It’s a very interesting piece and I recommend it like most everything else Cassidy writes. But he quotes from my post on Snowden to make a point about differing attitudes toward him. So I wanted to take a moment to respond. Read More
When the Senate passes its immigration reform bill this afternoon, Republicans will be left to carry the blame if they can’t, or choose not, to move a comprehensive bill of their own with a pathway to citizenship through the House.
Given the immediacy of the situation, and every indication that they’re going to drop the ball, what they need to do is figure out a way to avoid that blame, or even better to turn it back on Democrats. The problem for them is, see paragraph one. And paragraph one is leading them into amazing displays of public reasoning like this from deputy whip Pete Roskam. Read More
Gov. Perry (R-TX) says it’s “unfortunate” Wendy Davis “hasn’t learned from her own example” of being a teenage mom.
Perry followed up by petitioning the federal government to allow Texas to rename itself the ‘state of Mansplainia’.
I’m confused by the responses from Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, to Rep. Levin’s questions about recent developments in the IRS controversy – specifically news that progressive keywords were apparently also flagged as Tea Party ones were.
On the one hand, George has stated that this didn’t come up because he was instructed to look narrowly at the treatment of Tea Party groups. So these other questions were beyond the scope of his review. On the other hand, he’s saying these left-leaning groups and their keywords were not flagged for the sort of heightened scrutiny applied to Tea Party groups. These two answers seems to be in some level of contradiction, no?