The Commerce Department confirms that Secretary John Bryson had a seizure, but can’t or won’t say what connection the seizure had to the alleged hit and run incident Saturday. The White House, obviously wanting to distance itself, is referring questions to the Commerce Department.
A Commerce official tells AP that Bryson, who was cited for felony hit and run, has only a “limited recall of the events.” The official also says that Bryson has no history of seizures. So we’re left with a 68-year-old man having his first seizure — apparently though still not certainly while driving — spending Saturday night in the hospital for observation, then jetting from California to DC for work on Monday.
Stay tuned.
The Justice Department warns Florida that is is preparing to file a lawsuit to stop the state’s purge of voter rolls.
Not that weird, says TPM Reader KM:
I just wanted to put in my $0.02 on this topic, because it sounds like there’s a lot of confusion (no pun intended). Nothing in any of the statements put out so far is at all inconsistent with Bryson having had a seizure, and I speak as someone who’s had a lot of them.
I think people tend to only think of seizures as the convulsive grand mal (tonic-clonic) type, or sometimes petit mal (blacking out), which is not at all true. There is a huge range of different things that can happen when your brain screws up.
The White House announced this evening that Commerce Secretary John Bryson is taking a “medical leave of absence from his position as Commerce Secretary as he undergoes tests and evaluations.”
How is social media transforming coverage of political campaigns? How has the Internet killed the news cycle? A few weeks ago I was on a panel where I discussed these issues with NBC News Vivian Schiller and GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram. See the video after the jump and let me know what you think. Read More
On year after Giffords’ shooting, violent gun-addled campaign trail rhetoric is back. Some of the best (worst) examples.
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FEC sues former Sen. Larry Craig over bathroom sex sting defense cash.
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Yesterday the big news of the day was a series of comments former Florida Governor and presidential heir apparent Jeb Bush made at a Bloomberg View breakfast about the state of American politics. Now he’s saying those comments were taken out of context. So what did he really say? Read More