Like you were there! Experience Rep. Charlie Rangel’s 80th Birthday Bash-cum-fundraiser in today’s TPM Slideshow. Middle fingers not included.
TPM Reader GH walks us through a taxonomy of the varieties of Birthrighterism …
I think we all seem to be missing a key distinction among the different shades of public figures calling for us to re-examine birthright citizenship. People like Alan Keyes or Tom Tancredo get credit for being against revising the 14th Amendment, but in truth, their position is actually crazier than Lindsey Graham’s.
Not quite sure what to make of this yet. But SurveyUSA’s polls this year are leaning pretty strongly toward the GOP candidates relative to most other pollsters.
What caught my eye was this result for the California Senate race which has Fiorina over Boxer by 5 points, even though all the other recent polls, including Rasmussen, show Boxer ahead by at least a few points and in some cases by almost 10 points. So for instance, the current TPM Poll Average for that race gives Boxer a 2.6 point edge. But take out SurveyUSA and the margin pops up to 5 points, which is a big difference when a lot pollsters are following this race. Read More
Air Force combat aviator gets accused of rape by whackadoodle guy with a history of making unsubstantiated rape allegations. The accuser claims to have been working undercover for the Air Force to ferret out HIV-infected men who were planning to intentionally spread HIV to military men through sex parties. Hence his nude presence in the hot tub with the aviator. (The shrewd local detective observed wryly in his official report: “It should be noted that [the accuser] could not give me an answer as to why he, himself, had gotten naked.”) The police investigate and find not just no evidence of rape, but what appears to be a made-up story. The Air Force investigates, too, and finds no wrongdoing.
With me so far? Here’s where things really get crazy.
In defending himself, the aviator argues it was consensual sex and in so doing reveals himself to be gay. That is in apparent violation of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and now the Air Force is trying to boot him out of the service, just one year before his 20-year hitch is up and he gets his pension. Megan Carpentier has the details.
The Post lays out the options. Elizabeth Warren, principled reformer or power-hungry extremist freak?
Is this judicial snark?
One of our commentators pointed out this passage in Judge Walker’s ruling today in the Prop 8 case …
Proponents also point to harm resulting from “a cloud of uncertainty” surrounding the validity of marriages performed after judgment is entered but before proponents’ appeal is resolved. Doc #705 at 10. Proponents have not, however, alleged that any of them seek to wed a same-sex spouse.
A few articles on the Manhattan mosque disgrace. A piece in the Times on Mayor Bloomberg’s staunch support for the project. And another by Christopher Hitchens (who writes with a new sort of power, unbent in the face of a grim cancer diagnosis) in Slate on the disgrace of the opposition to the project . I think Hitchens is far too credulous or perhaps better to say accusatory in cherry-picking a few quotes from Imam Feisal Adbul Rauf. But he’s more right than not in arguing that these are really beside the point. We don’t demonstrate our values by disgracing them. The whole episode is really far beyond the particulars of the identities of the organizers of the project — notwithstanding the fact that the Bush administration picked the Imam leading the effort to represent the US abroad as a spokesman for pluralist, moderate Islam.
Indeed, what’s struck me in recent days about this ‘controversy’ is how much the opponents of the project have more or less given up on the idea that Rauf et al. are some sort of crypto-terrorists or radical Islamists or somehow or another in hock to bin Laden or Hamas or whomever else. Yes, there are some people still claiming this. And various critics are still distorting scattered quotes from the past or seizing on Rauf’s failure to denounce this or that group sufficiently. By and large though the critics are conceding this point. The core of their argument now is simply that there shouldn’t be any mosque anywhere in the vicinity of the Trade Center Complex. (Set aside for the moment that this mosque isn’t really a mosque; it’s more like a YMCA, perhaps YMMA. And there’s already at least one mosque already there.) Read More
It’s the perfect convergence of anti-immigration and anti-Islam fear mongering: terrorists will come to the U.S. to have babies on U.S. soil so that they become U.S. citizens and can slip easily back into the country once they grow up and kill us all!
CNN’s Anderson Cooper has been going after this nonsense. Last night he had on Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Crazytown) who went completely unhinged when Cooper pressed him to provide evidence of this “threat.” Watch.
Senate Republicans reportedly determined to permanently block Obama’s nominee as ambassador to Turkey, Frank Ricciardone, a 34-year Foreign Service veteran with previous postings in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Afghanistan.