We’ve been talking about Nevada’s Sue Lowden and her advocacy of bartering medical care for foodstuffs.
But it turns out that a week ago another Republican in Tennessee was proposing bartering for medical treatment (in this case with vegetables rather than chickens) as a possible alternative to conventional health insurance.
Remember our old buddy Scott Bloch, the guy who headed up the Office of Special Counsel and allegedly summoned Geeks on Call to wipe his hard drive clean to conceal evidence from an inspector general’s investigation? Who can forget.
Well, he’s now been charged by the feds with contempt of Congress for failing to reveal to congressional investigators the whole story about his use of Geeks on Call.
We told you earlier today about the case in Philadelphia of a perhaps trend-setting but certainly innovative outing of an allegedly gay politician as in fact straight.
So who’s telling the truth and who’s not? Accuser Babette Josephs now says “I don’t even care” about Gregg Kravitz’s sexuality and Kravitz calls Josephs’ attempted straight outing of him “not only inflammatory, but damaging to members of the LGBT community.”
Our Rachel Slajda has now spoken to the accuser and the accused and brings you the latest.
We’ll put out an official job announcement soon. But I just wanted to put out a heads up that we’re going to hiring a new reporter for TPMMuckraker. The position will be based out of our New York headquarters. We’re looking for someone with a dogged reporter’s instinct, a sense of humor, someone who gets building a story narrative, who knows TPM and our style of iterative reporting, and understands new media. We plan on having this new person on board at TPM in June. So we’ll be moving on a relatively fast turnaround.
Newt Gingrich says the Tea Party movement will turn into the “militant wing” of the GOP.
With all the feathers flying from the Health Care cost control debate, this piece got sort of lost in the shuffle today. So I want to flag it for your attention. It’s easy to overstate the power of money in a political race. So long as both candidates have a threshold amount of money adequate to get a message out, it’s hard for a money advantage to save a candidate who has the odds really stacked against them. But Christina Bellantoni points out that a number of the most endangered Senate Dems — Reid, Lincoln, Specter, Boxer, et al. — all have lots more money in the bank than their GOP rivals, even as they’re struggling to do degrees in the polls. In the case of Harry Reid, for instance, something like 30 times as much as his likely rival.
Money can only do so much. And there’s no way national Republicans won’t at the very least adequately fund these challengers. But the disparities are great enough that it’s made me rethink at least a little what I think is going to happen in these races.
The Army has initiated court martial proceedings against Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, a doctor at Walter Reed Army Hospital who has refused to comply with lawful orders on the grounds that President Obama hasn’t proven he was born in the United States.
The charges are serious: three counts of failure to obey a lawful order, one count of dereliction of duty, and one count of missing a movement. You can read the charging document here.
Dick Durbin predicts Mitch McConnell will be able to hold his caucus together to filibuster financial reform for only so long before the united front begins to crumble. That and the day’s other political new in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Ohio Republicans’ rallying cry to defeat Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH): “Let’s take Betty Sutton out of the House and put her back in the kitchen.”