A playbill of sorts for followers of the Ensign scandal: a photo gallery of the cast of characters and a timeline of the key events. Theatre glasses, anyone?
The new “Congressional Sovereignty Caucus” — opposed to “transnational bodies” that undermine America’s “vibrant Judeo-Christian heritage” — launches next week with an event featuring transnational players Oliver North, Frank Gaffney and Doug Feith.
All those anonymous claims emanating from the Ensign camp that the Hamptons were trying to extort him for money? Well, now Ensign’s spokesperson says it was “exorbitant demands for cash and other financial benefits” made through an attorney and that the matter was referred to Ensign’s lawyer.
Maybe the Hamptons’ attorney is a klutz and botched the pre-lawsuit negotiations with demands that amounted to actionable extortion. But as the Las Vegas Sun has reported, neither the FBI nor local law enforcement is investigating any alleged extortion here.
So far this just looks like the usual run-up to a lawsuit. I guess Ensign gets more sympathy from his buddies in the Senate by telling them he’s being extorted. You know how it is …
Late Update: From TPM Reader AK:
Ensign’s behavior may be questionable, but so is Hampton’s. In his initial statement put out by his attorney, Hampton talks about a personal matter they were trying to keep private while five days earlier he wrote an odd and dramatic letter to a Fox News anchor trying to make this personal matter as public as possible.
No doubt.
“Mr. President:
Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried, Republicans are digging in, and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine …”
Read the rest here.
The New York Times reports that statistically speaking, Sonia Sotomayor is objectively not an activist — though the label itself is meaningless. That and other political news in today’s TPMDC Saturday Roundup.
Timesman David Rohde, whose kidnapping by the Taliban last November in Afghanistan had been kept hush-hush by the Times and other media outlets, managed to escape his captors Friday night and is now safe with U.S. troops.
President Obama’s statement this afternoon on Iran:
The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.
As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.
Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.
Estimates of the number of deaths Saturday in the violence in Iran range from 10 (Iranian state media) to 19 (CNN) to much higher (maybe 150). None of the numbers has been independently confirmed.
Iran’s Guardian Council has announced that there were 50 cities in the country where more than 100% of eligible voters voted — an irregularity that accounts for some three million votes.