aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Friday, July 14, 2006
Phone jam
A New Hampshire judge yesterday cleared the way for Democrats to question top Republican Party officials—including its former national committee chairman—in connection with a 2002 phone-jamming scheme, as a local political scandal continues to reach into the realm of national politics.
Via Steve Benen:
I can think of five pretty important questions that Republicans have been avoiding from the beginning.
* Why did James Tobin call the White House 12 times on Election Day 2002 while he was criminally interfering with an election?* Why did the RNC pay Tobin's legal bills?
* Why did the RNC consult with the White House about paying those bills?
* Why does indicted phone-jammer Shaun Hansen believe his company carried out a scheme that had the seal of approval of both the Republican National Committee and the White House?
* And how is it that Jack Abramoff's tribal clients donated the almost-exact amount of the cost of the phone jamming to the New Hampshire GOP, despite the fact that New Hampshire doesn't have any federally recognized Indian tribes or Indian gambling?
Thanks to yesterday's court ruling, Republicans who'll have to give depositions include Ed Gillespie, who was chairman of the RNC chairman at the time; former RNC political director Terry Nelson, now a top John McCain adviser; Chris LaCivita, former national political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee; and Alicia Davis, who worked in the White House political affairs office under Ken Mehlman, the current RNC chairman.
Victory in White County
A federal judge has issued a ruling requring a Georgia county to allow students at the White County High School to hold a meeting of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) on the school’s grounds. The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This is a great victory for the lesbian and gay students and their friends at White County High School,” said Beth Littrell the Associate Legal Director of the ACLU of Georgia in a statement released today.
Instead of allowing the GSA to meet, the White County School Board voted to take an action purported to prohibit all clubs from meeting. The ACLU, in filing the case in February of this year, challenged the School District’s decision to not allow the GSA to meet. Depite the district’s claim, extracurricular clubs continued to meet at the school, a fact proven in the case’s trial.
A FACT PROVEN IN COURT. The school district changed the rules in order to keep a gay straight alliance from meeting, then cheated! What do these people think they are teaching students through behavior like that?
Newsom on gay marriage
[San Francisco Mayor Gavin] Newsom had strong words for his fellow Democrats: Stop lying to the American people. Newsom claims, based on first hand knowledge, that the “vast majority” of congressional Dems favor gay marriage, but they lack the “moral courage” to say so.
“As long as we allow this to be dangled in front of us because of our unwillingness to say publicly what so many of us are saying privately,” Newsom told me, “it will haunt the Democratic party.”
Drinking in the news today
As far as I’m concerned he wasn’t drunk! And he wouldn’t have been legally drunk prior to the .08 standard:
Beer company executive, chief commercial pitcher and former Senate candidate Pete Coors confirmed Thursday he was cited in May for driving under the influence of alcohol after leaving a friend’s wedding celebration.
“I made a mistake,” Coors said in a prepared statement. “I should have planned ahead for a ride. For years, I’ve advocated the responsible use of our company’s products. That’s still my message, and our company’s message, and it’s the right message.
“I am sorry that I didn’t follow it myself.”
I bet he was wearing nice pants:
Women going on boozy nights out have been warned by police to “wear nice pants” in case they fall down drunk in the street.
A Suffolk police safety campaign magazine shows pictures of young women slumped on the ground next to messages urging them: “If you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it”.
“If you fall over or pass out, remember your skirt or dress may ride up,” the magazine says.
“You could show off more than you intended - for all our sakes, please make sure you’re wearing nice pants and that you’ve recently had a wax.”
The latter via Outside the Beltway, who I’ve quoted again and again on alcohol-related ridiculousness.
Though I don’t go as far as a certain Ohio Democrat - “Let the drunks have their time on the road” - I’d like to see a more realistic measurement (fat v thin, high tolerance for alcohol v low, etc.) and assessment of the threat, then act on that.
UPDATE (correction): Oops… Note that in the British vernacular, “pantsâ€Â� = US “panties.”
Big gets BIGGER
CNet has a roundup of the new big screens:
Matsushita Electric Industrial announced Monday that it hopes to sell a 103-inch plasma TV, beating out Samsung’s announced 102-inch plasma screen by exactly an inch. The flat panel, which was shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in
January, is described as “bigger than a double-sized mattress and almost as heavy as an upright piano.” The high-definition television measures about 7.8 feet by 4.5 feet and weighs a mammoth 474 pounds.
Mortgage old black people?
In advance of its August publication date, GQ has released a big piece on Ralph Reed today, with one gem in particular: a plan hatched by Reed and Jack Abramoff which sounds suspiciously like “mortgaging old black people,” as a former Reed associate told the magazine.
In July of 2003, Abramoff and Reed considered launching something called the Black Churches Insurance Program. READ ON.
