Sen. Chris Dodd received just five campaign contributions from Connecticut residents in the last quarter. That and the day’s other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
This is pretty amazing. Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protege and respected, hardball GOP operative who was brought in last year to run John McCain’s campaign is going to tell the GOP they need to just get it over with an get behind the movement to grant full marriage equality to same sex couples.
Former top McCain adviser Steve Schmidt is planning to use a Friday speech to the Log Cabin Republicans to urge the GOP to drop its opposition to same-sex marriage.
“I’m confident American public opinion will continue to move on the question toward majority support, and sooner or later the Republican Party will catch up to it,” Schmidt plans to say according to excerpts provided to ABC News.
Schmidt’s push for Republicans to endorse same-sex marriage comes as his party is grappling with a string of gay rights victories in Iowa, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.
To be clear, in the speech, ABC reports that Schmidt will also make the argument for marriage equality on the merits. He’s not simply saying it’s necessary politically.
Remember the Scott Beauchamp story? He was the Army private who wrote a piece for the New Republic describing out of control US soldiers in Iraq. He got a few facts wrong — though, at least to me, it was always pretty fuzzy whether there was any reason to believe there was any bad faith involved — and on the basis of that the Pentagon and pretty much all the right-wing media crucified the guy. Now it turns out that one of the soldiers who The Weekly Standard relied on as a sort of anti-character witness against Beauchamp was just convicted of executing four handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqi men. Remember that great journalism by Michael Goldfarb? Brian Beutler has the details.
James Horne is a leading sleep research expert. He was a bit bummed to learn that his research was cited in the torture memos to justify keeping detainees awake for as long as 11 days. Zack Roth just spoke to him over at TPMmuckraker.
Who wrote the torture memos? And where are they know?
(Hint: One of them is a federal circuit court judge.)