WaPo:

The former treasurer for the National Republican Congressional Committee transferred as much as $1 million in committee funds into his personal and business accounts, officials announced today, describing a scheme that could prove to be one of the largest campaign frauds in recent history.

For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, used wire transfers [Hmmm… cash!] to funnel money out of the NRCC and into other political committees he controlled, then shifted the funds into his own personal accounts, the committee said.

“The evidence we have today indicated we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), NRCC chairman.

Well, now you know how we feel, Tom!  Read more 

YOUR FAITHFUL OREGON representative for the MTV Street Team ’08 (ahem, yours truly) is invisible on this day, because Oregon doesn’t exist when it comes to Super Tuesday. But my Street Team peeps are LIVE on the scene in each Super Tuesday state.  Read more 

DEAR MISTER ROMNEY, I really appreciate your steadfast commitment to your faith. I’ve heard people choose these types of ideologies because it grounds a person in morality and integrity and human values. And of course I can admire that. With all the hate- and fear-mongering filling the public square today, I welcome men of your caliber.

I only have a small question. Given that a central tenet of Mormonism is that the Indians of the Americas are descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel, how do you reconcile your current anti-immigrant stance with the fact that Mexicans are descended, too, from these same people? How do your actions fit into the theological framework now that you are the one trying to stop them from wandering?

and furthermore—  Read more 

ABC’s Political Radar has a data point, but misses the interpretation:

Romney Attacks Go to the Dogs
ABC News’ John Berman Reports:

Mitt Romney’s latest weapon in his barrage of jabs at Mike Huckabee? A dog named Spike.

A dog named Spike that likes to write letters. It is a piece of direct mail sent to Iowa voters, purportedly from Spike that begins, “Dear Iowa Republicans…”

It goes on to say, “You might have read about how Mike Huckabee raised taxes even more than Bill Clinton…”

Spike is apparently referring to the growing litany of mailings and “contrast” television ads where Mitt Romney is trying to paint Mike Huckabee as a liberal.

Spike continues: “What makes me barking mad? Mike Huckabee raised taxes on dog groomers! He went too far when he taxed the people who make me beautiful.”

It is signed, “Bow Wow, Spike.” It seems to be a genuine attempt at light-hearted humor on the campaign trail.

“Genuine,” “light-hearted,” and “humor”?

From Willard Mitt Romney?

John, what have you been smoking? That’s just so implausible there has to be a better reason:  Read more 

[Welcome Drunk Report readers.]

I swear I’m not making this up! And it saddens me, just a little, truly. I would have thought that McCain, having been tortured, would be the very last Republican candidate to throw his hat in this particular ring:

But doggone it—hat tip to alert reader muttley66—once again I just wasn’t cynical enough.

Follow me to the grand guignol below:  Read more 

Welcome, I heart Huckabee readers! Welcome, Planet Romney readers!

Here’s the barebones story of how 17-year-old Mike Huckabee’s son, David, and 18-year-old Clayton Frady killed a dog when they were Boy Scouts, and got fired for it.* From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1998 (as quoted in DogBlog):

[David Huckabee,] the younger son of Gov. Mike Huckabee and another teen were fired last month from jobs at a Boy Scout camp after the killing of a stray dog.

So, why were they fired? For violating Scout Law.

Marcal Young of Texarkana, scout executive of the Caddo Area Council that operates the camp where the dog was killed, said this week that two boys violated a Scout law, “A Scout is kind.”

So, how and why did David Huckabee (and Clayton Frady) kill the dog?  Read more 

Too, too delicious! Congressional Quarterly politics:  Read more 

New Orleans Advocate:

Ex-prostitute tells Hustler of Vitter encounters
Vitter used condoms and engaged in straight sex, “no weird fetishes or anything like that,” [Wendy] Ellis says in the magazine.

Ellis says Vitter did one thing, though, that none of her other clients did; he took his used condoms with him.

Uh, that’s not weird? I mean, what’s he doing with them? Keeping a scrapbook?  Read more 

But I bow to the master:

Hooker: Duke Cunningham Fed Me Grapes in Hot Tub

Then the subhed just clinches it:  Read more 

Jeebus, what’s wrong with these people? Do they think they’re Catholic priests, or what? Just plain Republicans?

AP:

The amended complaint also included an internal ministry report, titled “Scandal Vulnerability Assessment,” documenting allegations of misconduct by the university and the Roberts family. Only a partial report was included in the Oct. 2 lawsuit.

The more detailed account alleges Richard Roberts’ wife, Lindsay, spent the night in the ORU guest house with an underage male “on nine separate occasions,” and was photographed 29 times with an underage male in her sports car, among other allegations.

You know who this is reminding me of, right?  Read more 

Everyone should always call it “Murdoch’s WSJ” just so we don’t forget. Subscription only but I’ll fair-use some of it for you here.

But polling data confirm business support for Republicans is eroding.
In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in September, 37% of
professionals and managers identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, down from 44% three years ago.

Richard Clinch, a 69-year-old New York native, illustrates the party’s plight. The retired Westinghouse manager and mechanical engineer says he has been “a lifelong Republican.” As a young fiscal conservative, he was attracted by the party’s reputation for frugal and competent governance, he says. The Democratic Party left him cold, he says, because of its social spending and ties to the unions that exasperated him at work. As a retiree in Annapolis, Md., he became a local
Republican officer.

Yet next year, for the first time since he began voting in 1960, Mr. Clinch won’t support the Republican presidential nominee, he says. He only “very reluctantly” voted for Mr. Bush’s re-election in 2004. “Like many Republicans, I am frustrated,” he says. “We’ve lost control of spending,” and the administration’s execution of the Iraq war has been “incompetent.” Mr. Clinch says he is liberal about rights for women and gays, and vexed that “we [Republicans] get sidetracked on these issues like gay marriage.”  Read more 

We’ve really got to stop using the term “mercenaries” for Blackwater, and start using the term “Christianist mercenaries.” Because it’s true:

Erik Prince is 37 years old. He founded Blackwater in 1997 with money he inherited from his father, Edgar Prince, the head of Prince Automative. The elder Prince and his wife were major Republican and conservative activists and funders. And Prince himself co-founded The Family Research Council with Gary Bauer and apparently provided the key early funding for the group.

According to Bauer, “I can say without hesitation that, without Ed and Elsa and their wonderful children, there simply would not be a Family Research Council.”

Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is married is the former Chair of the Michigan Republican Party and her husband is Dick DeVos, failed candidate for governor of Michigan and scion of the DeVos family, founders of Amway and major funders of Republican and conservative causes.

Amway is privately owned by the DeVos and van Andel families. And to give some sense of the scale of their political giving, according to a 2005 Center for Public Integrity study, Dick & Betsy DeVos were the fifth largest political givers in the country during the 2004 election cycle. Richard DeVos Sr. & his wife were ranked third. And Jay Van Andel was ranked second.

In addition to running Blackwater Prince also serves on the board of Christian Freedom International [Blackwater’s marketing arm].

Well, great. The winger billionaires, the Christianists, and the Republican Party have a private army under their control. But don’t worry! I’m sure they’ll never use it here! (Not. And not.)

And what an army it is! So many lovely details, but this is one is my favorite:  Read more 

So it’s Nephew Weekend for me (yeah!) and we’re sitting here watching The Day the Earth Stood Still (What is it about 50s movies that make them so perfect for young kids? No swearing, gratuitious violence or sex, that’s what). I’m trying to teach him about truth and lies. He’s only 3, but he’s bright and chatty and I think he’s asked me “Why?” about 1 million times today. So I think he’s ready for “advanced” concepts like the difference between truth and lies.

This may seem like a nonpolitical post to you, but it’s not. I’m trying to better understand how Republicans can function, how their world is constructed, and I’m wondering if some of it doesn’t come out of their childhoods. Actually, I’m sure that childhood development is the root of our problem. I can’t do the detailed post right now, but let’s just say that “Bobo’s World” isn’t just a pithy joke.  Read more 

This just beats all. Who is this, and why does she hate women so?  Read more 

WSJ “Opinion Journal” today:
“Democrats and Cannibals
The Kos kids try but fail to devour party moderates.”
BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL Friday, August 17, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
And what else do we know ’bout good ol’ Henry Cuellar?  Read more 

[Welcome, Alternate Brain readers! Welcome Wonkette readers!]

It’s no secret Mitt Romney advocated doubling the size of Guantanamo’s torture camp, nor that he tied his dog to the roof of his car for a twelve hour drive [until a “brown liquid” flowed down the back window—Lambert]. But he’s also tight with Mel Sembler in Florida (Romney press release), and if that name, Mel Sembler, sounds familiar, it’s cause he’s the guy who used to run Straight, Inc., the place teens and addicts were sent for behavior modification, by torture.  Read more 

Hat tip to DailyKos, where the diarist “Free Exchange On Campus” provided the quotes below:  Read more 

The Charlotte Observer:

Coy Privette, a retired Baptist pastor, conservative lawmaker and outspoken advocate for Christian groups, was charged Thursday with paying a prostitute for sex acts.

The 74-year-old Cabarrus County commissioner was arrested at his home in Kannapolis early Thursday. He appeared before a Rowan County magistrate on six misdemeanor charges and was released on a promise to appear in court Aug. 22. He did not return e-mails or calls to his cell and home phones, and no one answered the door at his Kannapolis home.

Privette, a prominent Republican with a 30-year career, is one of the state’s most vocal opponents against alcohol sales and legal gambling. He also serves on the State Baptist Convention of North Carolina and as president of the Christian Action League of North Carolina.

When, oh when, are the Christianists going to start cleaning up their own house, stop trying to legislate for the rest of us, and give us all some peace and quiet? (see Haggard 6:9, and Matthew 7:5).  Read more 

Case closed, I’d say. Barbara Jordan on impeachment (via the Bra’ed One). It’s a case study for today’s Democrats on how to talk about the issue, so go read the whole, wonderful thing. I’m going to pull out quotes on the legal rationale:

[BARBARA JORDAN]:We know the nature of impeachment. We’ve been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to “bridle” the executive if he engages in excesses. “It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men.”

Justice Story: “Impeachment” is attended — “is intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from violations.”

The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable “who behave amiss or betray their public trust.”

James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: “A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.”

And she concludes:  Read more 

Yikes (via Rondam):

Oregonians called Peter DeFazio’s office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.

As a member of the U.S. House on the Homeland Security Committee, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure “bubbleroom” in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.

On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED.

“I just can’t believe they’re going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack,” DeFazio says.

Believe it!

Homeland Security Committee staffers told his office that the White House initially approved his request, but it was later quashed. DeFazio doesn’t know who did it or why.

Well, it’s not like Bush would ever use a terrorist attack for political gain, so I’m sure this is nothing to worry about.

DeFazio’s bottom line:  Read more 

Via that Rubber Hose guy (Cliff Schecter (Blue Tide Rising))), this would be laughable if it weren’t… well, so extremely laughable:

I, _______________, promise never to abandon my present Republican Party affiliation for the purpose of political gain. …

So, it would be OK to leave the Republican Partei to marry your gay lover? Just asking …

I solemnly pledge to always be a Republican, no matter what promises are made by external forces seeking only to undermine the Republican values I stand for. I can have reasonable disagreement with members of the Republican Party; however, at no point will ‘Party switching’ or quitting of the Party be tolerable.

Signed,

X __________________________________ [in blood?]

So why would the Kansas Republicans feel they needed to force the Kool-Aid down their own member’s throats, I wonder?

Of course, the oath reads better in the original German….  Read more 

Just a passing fancy. Even though the NSA does bug everyone including Aunt Molly, and ratfucking and blackmail are Republican signature moves.

Following up on Atrios’s post of the CNN transcript:

[MONTGOMERY SIBLEY:] Well, I’m shocked about two things, if I might, Larry. Please understand that this is one escort service out of approximately 60 [including Shirlington Limo] in the Metro D.C. area. And indeed there are more escort services than there are McDonald’s in D.C.

Now what’s happened here is one service by the coincidence of Jeane being in California had all the calls recorded in the telephone records [and in the NSA intercepts?], and therefore were able to track the customers back through the record numbers. As the other escort services may or may not coming forward, we’re going to get a real full picture of what have goes on in the District of Columbia environments.

[DEBORAH PALFREY:] There’s another point that needs to be mentioned as well, perhaps even more important, and that is the susceptibility of blackmail of certain clients having used the service over the years. Most people at the moment for obvious reasons are focusing upon the hypocrisy angle. However, intellectualize a bit, think about it a bit, and you’ll come to the conclusion that we’ve come to, that there are possible people who have used the service who have become sub