On GMA this morning, they dissected the video of the G-8 moment that yielded the Obama photo which right-wing sites like Drudge had such a field day with yesterday. You be the judge.
The President this morning: “I want to be very careful — Africa is a continent, not a country.”
Yes, I know that’s pretty bold billing given the recent news out about Sen. Ensign (R-NV). But beyond all the salacious detail there’s a picture emerging of the man — who, remember, is a high-profile senator and had been considered a serious presidential candidate — that combines deeply manipulative traits with an almost childlike approach to those in authority around him.
Ensign is a member of something called the C Street group, which is part of a highly secretive religious outfit called ‘The Family’. It’s a combo religious fellowship and Capitol Hill group home where a number of Republican members of Congress live. And it’s run by a guy named Doug Coe. (Because the comedy never stops, remember that Gov. Sanford too is a member of the C Street group/Family.) In one of the more surreal episodes in this whole drama, while folks from ‘The Family’, including Sen. Coburn (R-OK), were trying to get Ensign to end his relationship with the girlfriend and write her and her husband a big check.
So Ensign agrees to do this. But the members of his fellowship had so little trust he could follow through that they had him write out a letter to the mistress that he was ending the relationship and then drove him to the local Fedex office to make sure he actually dropped the letter in the box. So he does that. But then after he shakes them loos he calls the mistress to tell her his friends made him write the letter and to ignore it.
It makes having his parents pay the couple off sound far less out of character.
And this was a man who was going to run for president.
Senate Republicans have quite the line up of opposition witnesses set to go next week during the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, including Frank Ricci, the New Haven firefighter who just won his reverse discrimination case after taking it all the way to the Supreme Court.
What I didn’t know is that, as Brian Beutler explains at TPMDC, Ricci landed a job with the fire department back in 1997 as part of a settlement of his own regular old discrimination suit (he has dyslexia). Not exactly the guy you would expect the GOP to make a poster boy for all of us “oppressed” white men.
Bush Administration domestic surveillance programs much broader than previously known. Spencer Ackerman has more. Here’s the joint report from the inspectors general.
We’re going through the report now, but for a frame of reference let me refer you back to this TPMmuckraker report by Paul Kiel and Spencer Ackerman from two Julys ago. I dare say we were on to something.
Late Update: Fair question from a reader:
Confused, could you clarify– I’ve been seeing headlines at TPM and elsewhere for a couple weeks saying things something like “CIA report delayed, AGAIN”. Is the IG report with the revelations of previously unknown Bush lawbreaking that you’re currently flashing the “breaking” notice for the same one that people were recently upset about the failure to release? Or is there ANOTHER report of this sort with yet more revelations still pending?
The report released today was compiled at the request (demand, really) of Congress by the IGs of the various entities that make up the intelligence community. This is a different report from the still-classified 2004 CIA report on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of torture whose release has been delayed several times and is still pending.
A neighbor of the Dem donor whose fundraiser was raided by the San Diego sheriff wants to make sure everyone knows she didn’t make the derogatory comments about gays and call police about the event: “We’re liberal Democrats — we have a Buddha on our table.”
TPM Reader BD:
Remember how during the 2008 campaign a lot of people suggested that Obama could prove to be an excellent role model for African-American men who have often been deemed less than responsible as husbands and fathers? Wouldn’t it be great if white Evangelical Republican men could come up with a role model like that too?
There’s one thing that Sarah Palin and Roland Burris can agree on. Watch.