The House GOP will vote en masse against the new war funding bill. What about the troops? For the House GOP, they take a back seat to sticking a finger in the eye of the IMF. That and the day’s other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Do Republicans need to reconsider social networking? The GOP launched off the year with Twitter as the killer app that was going lead the party back to a Web 2.0 new majority. Mostly though, it’s generated a series of train-wrecks, embarrassments and operatives having to apologize for using their Twitter accounts for racist jokes.
So today we’ve put together our list of the Top 7 GOP New Media FAILS so far this year.
Gary Sick explains that that poll of the Iranian election — which showed strong support for Ahmadinejad — was actually taken mostly before Mousavi’s campaign really took off — early and mid-May. It’s a solid poll, and taken under quite difficult circumstances. But it doesn’t necessarily tell us where the electorate was immediately in advance of election day.
You may have missed it because of the news out of Iran this weekend. But a bizarre and horrific incident came to light over the weekend in which the leadership of one of the ‘Minutemen’ border
vigilante groups (including Shawna Forde, pictured here) were arrested for a home invasion in which they tried to murder an entire family. The father and daughter were killed; the wife managed to survive. The father was reputedly a drug dealer and the idea was to kill the family, steal the money and take the drugs which would then be sold for more money. A fringe benefit, it seems, was that the mass murder could be pointed to as another example of mayhem on the border caused by an influx of illegals.
Now it turns out though that the suspects, in addition to having ties to ‘mainstream’ anti-immigration groups like FAIR and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, were also tied to white supremacist groups like the Aryan Nations and had a master plan to recruit a ‘militia’ of white supremacists who would pull other such home invasion stunts down in the southwest. Here’s our report.
Here’s an editorial note from a Reuters piece we just ran in our news section.
(Editors’ note: Reuters coverage is now subject to an Iranian ban on foreign media leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.)
We’ve been noticing today how, despite the fact that a lot seems to be going on in Tehran today, it’s much more difficult to get images or accounts of just what’s occurring. It seems like the blanket ban on reporters leaving their offices may be having a big effect.
You have to go all the way back to 2008 to find the same Republicans now voting against the new Afghanistan/Iraq war funding bill accusing some Democrats of not supporting the troops for voting against similar appropriations.
Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) reportedly about to hold press conference to admit to extramarital affair.
Here’s the announcement given to AP: “I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions.”
Looking ugly. The affair was fairly recent, from December 2007 to August 2008, the AP reports — and was with the wife of one of his Senate staffers. She worked on his campaign staff.