South Carolina blogger Will Folks won’t disclose the details of the affair he alleges he had with leading GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley — at least not all at once. Rather, he’s dropping some new revelation each day into his blog. Call it death by a thousand blog posts.
In today’s installment, Folks releases phone records showing hundreds of calls between the two back in 2007, when the affair allegedly occurred. Many of the calls lasted for hours and stretched late into the night. Suggestive? Yes. Conclusive? Not so much: Folks was working for Haley at the time.
I confess I’ve found the whole premise of the Sestak controversy maddening and faintly ridiculous since horse-trading political jobs is something that every president does. And no one with any knowledge of the law thinks it can possibly be illegal. But now that it turns out that Bill Clinton, reportedly, was the one who offered Sestak the job can we just agree it’s settled since Clinton was already impeached?
On Jimmy Fallon’s show last night, NBC’s Ann Curry relived her epic commencement address fail. Watch.
Not long ago Harry Reid looked like he might go the way of Chris Dodd. And he still has a hell of a battle on his hands for reelection. But for an interlocking series of reasons, things seem at least a little brighter than they did only a couple months ago. (The latest poll shows him neck and neck with his probable opponents compared to the ten to fifteen point deficits he faced only a couple months ago.) And one of the biggest reasons has been a staggering series of unforced errors by his would-be competitors. Read More
This is a story that deserves a lot of attention — from the sane people. A full scale right-wing freak out over the Muslim cultural center planned to be built near Ground Zero.
Local Dems in Indiana’s 5th District freak out at House nominee Tim Crawford, begging him to drop because they say he’s an inept right-wing freak.
Paul Rieckhoff: For veterans, the civilian-military divide feels widest on Memorial Day.
We know that Joe Lieberman is now an ‘independent Democrat’ and endorsed a number of Republicans in the 2008 presidential cycle, including John McCain. But even for Lieberman this one is quite a leap. Today Lieberman said that he’s still deciding who he’ll support in the Connecticut Senate race.
Now, Blumenthal has clearly had a tough few weeks, though it doesn’t seem to have hurt him much in the polls. But this is really more about McMahon. Let’s remember that before the Iraq War became his biggest issue, Joe’s big claim to fame and public issue was his fight against coarseness and obscenity in American culture. So he’s going to endorse the CEO of American pro wrestling, which is basically a festival of cartoonish mock violence and copious T&A? Not that there’s anything wrong with that …
Late Update: The sad thing is that I’ve probably had to use some version of that headline a dozen or more times over the last few years. But it’s never the ultimate. There’s always more.
I hadn’t seen South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley on camera until we found this video of her today addressing a hungry pack of reporters eager for any morsel about her alleged affair with political consultant turned blogger Will Folks. As a result, I didn’t realize what a consummate pro she is. She’s something to watch. Collected, sharp-witted, and always a smile, but not plastic. She’s got the makings of a national politician, were it not for the current messiness.
She has quite the personal story, too. She was born Nimrata Randhaw in South Carolina to Sikh immigrant parents. She became an accountant, married, and had two children. In 2004, she knocked off the longest serving member of the South Carolina House to win her seat, becoming the first South Asian elected to public office in the state.
She denies the affair, and he hasn’t produced proof of it yet. So I’m withholding judgment. But if it is true and the attractive first generation overachiever ended up in an affair with a scraggly blogger then decided to run for governor, doesn’t that make her pretty much a badass? I don’t condone it, but I kind of admire it.