TPM Reader EA notes how the kind of boffo over-the-top ‘branding’ games that are the norm in 30 second attack ads can be rather more pernicious when applied to religious hate speech …
It seems like enough damage has been done with the misnomer “Ground Zero Mosque,” but Palin’s tweet that the mosque is just two blocks away from “9/11” is similar to the crawl headline I saw in the Trentonian over the weekend visiting my Grandmother in the Philly burbs. It said, “Obama supports 9/11 mosque.” (I wonder where this construction originated and how widespread it has become relative to others)
While interning for us last year, Eric Nusbaum wrote an incredibly moving essay for his sports blog Pitchers and Poets that has now been selected for inclusion in the anthology The Best American Sports Writing 2010. Great work, Eric!
Presidential candidate and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) says the State Department’s sponsorship of Imam Rauf as part of its program to send American Muslims abroad to speak about US religious pluralism is “disgusting” and “dangerous.”
The jury has returned a verdict in the criminal trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The court is expected to announce the verdict at any time now. The consensus among observers seems to be that the jury, in its 14th day of deliberations, will not be able to return a verdict on all the counts.
Rand Paul’s lead over Democrat Jack Conway in the Kentucky Senate race is just 5 points.
A longtime TPM Reader weighs in on the Blago verdict …
This verdict should not be a surprise to anyone. For a long time knowledgeable observers in Chicago have looked at the government’s charges and really thought that there was no there there. The fact that the Governor had not benefited at all from any of his alleged machinations played a huge role.
But looking at the case, you really see that Fitzgerald blew it. Essentially these charges were drawn up overnight after the Chicago Tribune called Fitzgerald in his office and told him that they were running a story the next day that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was tapping the Governor’s telephones. Not a single completed crime had occurred.
Another TPM Reader from the defense bar weighs in with his own verdict on the Blago verdict: never talk to the government.
That’s a lawyers’ argument. No doubt. But having watched a lot of public corruption cases from start to finish over the last decade, I have to say there’s a lot of truth in what he says. A lot of these public corruption charges are just really hard to make stick. There’s no getting around that. Especially the ones that center on some alleged quid pro quo. And when people do get convicted of stuff, or find themselves compelled to plea out, more often than not it’s on ancillary charges, often for lying to federal investigators, rather than for acts that made them crooked in the first place.
As our other TPM Reader noted earlier, it looks now that Fitzgerald just never had that strong a case on the law — in good measure because press leaks forced his hand and made him bring the charges before the corrupt transactions had been completed. That’s the paradox of this one. Before the bar of common sense, Fitzgerald had more than enough evidence to show that Blago was as crooked a pol as Chicago had produced in some time, which is saying something. But on the law, the case maybe just wasn’t that solid. It will be interesting to hear what the jury has to say.
Rand Paul has a new position on the Cordoba House Project: as a libertarian and believer in private property rights he believes it should be left to local authorities to decide. But he doesn’t believe it should be built. Says the campaign: “In Dr. Paul’s opinion, the Muslim community would better serve the healing process by making a donation to the memorial fund for the victims of September 11th.”
Former President Bush offers ‘no comment’ on Cordoba House/mosque controversy.