Author: David Weigel

My story this morning found the outrage over Keep America Safe’s “al-Qaeda 7″ ad petering out, with one reason being a general disinterest from politicians who could feed the story. But Josh Rogin got Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on the record about the ad, and the pivotal GOP senator takes a mighty hard swing.

“I’ve been a military lawyer for almost 30 years, I represented people as a defense attorney in the military that were charged with some pretty horrific acts, and I gave them my all,” said Graham. “This system of justice that we’re so proud of in America requires the unpopular to have an advocate and every time a defense lawyer fights to make the government do their job, that defense lawyer has made us all safer.”

Graham pointed out that when Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito were facing Senate confirmation, some attempted to use their client lists against them and it was wrong then too.

“I’m with Kenneth Starr on this one,” Graham added, referring to a letter signed by several GOP lawyers, many of whom defended Bush-era detainee policies, condemning the “al Qaeda 7″ ad.

I first encountered former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) at a 2007 forum on, of all things, the media, at the 2007 Yearly Kos convention. (Starting in 2008, the annual event was renamed Netroots Nation.) Massa portrayed himself as an angry ex-Republican who considered himself part of the liberal blogosphere — a movement with an output he compared to the writings of Thomas Paine. Over 15 minutes, he lit into Bill O’Reilly — who was encouraging advertisers to dump the convention on the grounds that it was sponsored by a “hate site” — and drew bigger and bigger cheers from the crowd.

To my surprise, a slightly edited video of that speech is still online. Behold, the new hero of Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.

I didn’t leave the Republican Party. It ran away from me, and it ran away from this country, and it has become so constricted in its own twisted evil that even those who look in the mirror and say “I’m a Republican” can no longer say it, unless the bathroom door is closed and no one can hear them! You see, the Republican Party may have once been the party of the big tent, but it’s now become a very, very small outhouse. And you know what it’s full of. And Bill O’Reilly, I’m talking to you!

Note also Massa’s passionate embrace of universal health care.

Some of the least convincing score-settling in “Courage and Consequences” comes when Karl Rove attempts to rebut the charge that he politicized the appointment of U.S. attorneys — the chapter dealing with this is titled “Rove: the Myth.” For one thing, Rove admits filing three complaints about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, but argues that Iglesias was a glory hound who wanted “publicity in preparation for a future political campaign” and “failed to do anything about voter fraud.” Rove says one of his complaints was that Iglesias “sat for months” on an indictment of powerful New Mexico Democrats, “refusing to file it until after the 2006 election for fear he would offend prominent Democrats he might need if he ran for the U.S. Senate.”

I asked Iglesias, who is now part of special prosecution team for Guantanamo detainees, to respond to the specific allegations Rove makes in the book.

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias (Mark Murrmann/ZUMA Press)

ROVE: [Iglesias] failed to do anything about voter fraud that was so egregious that the Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) clerk, a Democrat, and the sheriff, a Republican, had both called for a federal investigation.

IGLESIAS: [Laughing] Oh, this belief that there was this endemic voter fraud. It’s absolutely true that I didn’t file a case, but that was because I didn’t have any evidence I could use to make the case. And I personally looked at the evidence that was supposed to back up these charges.

ROVE: I also passed on the complaint that Iglesias, in order to get publicity in preparation for a future political campaign, had personally bungled a high-profile corruption case involving the past and current state treasurers by interfering with the career prosecutors who were handling the trial.

IGLESIAS: Bungled? In 2005 I got the biggest fish, former state treasurer Michael Montoya, to plead guilty and cooperate with our investigation. And I got a conviction of the incumbent state treasurer, Robert Vigil, who resigned in lieu of impeachment and was sentenced to 37 months in prison. Now, I didn’t try the case, but I did supervise it. I did get back to back state treasurers to plead guilty or be found guilty at trial.

ROVE: I also forwarded claims that Iglesias had sat for months on an indictment involving charges of corruption by prominent Democrats in the constriction of the Bernalillo County Courthouse, refusing to file it until after the 2006 election for fear he would offend prominent Democrats he might need if he ran for the U.S. Senate.

IGLESIAS: That’s a complete fabrication. That indictment didn’t get filed until three weeks after I left office — in March 2007. Look, here’s where Rove’s lack of knowledge of DOJ policy hurts him factually. It’s standing policy that you can’t file an indictment right before an election if you think it will effect the outcome. But I’m sure Rove heard from local Republicans that I was intentionally keeping my powder dry. Even had I been planning a run for the Senate in the 2006 timeframe, I wouldn’t have intentionally withheld an indictment for fear of alienating the Democrats. I’m happy with what I’m doing. I have no plans to run for office.

On page 466 of “Courage and Consequences,” Karl Rove goes through an elaborate tap-dance to explain that firing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in early 2006 would have seemed political and “damaged the military’s faith in Bush as commander in chief” — but that the White House wanted to do it anyway.

It had to be a seamless move from the old secretary of defense to the new, and we couldn’t make that happen. That summer, I looked into whether FedEx CEO Fred Smith, Bush’s original choice for the post in 1999, was now available. He wasn’t.

There were some reports in 2000 that Smith was under consideration for this job, but none I remember that suggested the CEO of FedEx was Bush’s first choice. Nevertheless, Rove remained confident that leaving Rumsfeld in place for most of the year was the right decision because Democrats, still in the minority at that point, would have been annoying at confirmation hearings.

Democrats had already effectively deployed their party’s few remaining high-profile pro-defense faces, such as Congressmen Ike Skelton and Jack Murtha, to question whether the United States could ever prevail militarily. In the face of this, the spinelessness of some Republicans would have meant that an almost completely unified antiwar Democratic Party would have been duking it out in Congress with a demoralized and split GOP. Hardly helpful to Republican chances.

But at least Rove didn’t damage the military’s faith in Bush as commander in chief!

I’ve got a copy of Karl Rove’s “Courage and Consequence,” which is as chock-full of remembered conversations as a D.C. memoir should be. The first conversation that jumped out at me, from page 467, is Rove’s recollection of a pep talk Bill Clinton gave him at the November 13, 2006 groundbreaking for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.

Rove had just presided over the GOP’s loss of the House and Senate after bragging that predictions of such a thing happening were ignorant — he had “the math” that would prove them wrong. But only Clinton, said Rove, understood how the GOP’s turnout strategy had staved off greater losses.

Clinton told me that before the election, he and Democratic strategist James Carville had been keeping track of the generic ballot, which measures the relative strength of the two parties. The Democrats had a 13-point advantage just before Election Day. By comparison, Republicans had a 6-point advantage on the generic ballot going into the 1994 House elections and had picked up 54 seats. Clinton and Carville thought the Democratic 13-point lead would translate into a loss of at least 60 House seats for Republicans. Instead, Republicans lost 29. Clinton told me, “no one’s ever going to give you credit, but it was sheer genius what you and [RNC Chairman Ken] Mehlman did with the seventy-two hour task force. We should have won twice as many seats, but we didn’t because of what you all did to get out your vote. No one will give you credit, but I know what you did.”

One fact that makes this ring true — James Carville spent the week after the midterms telling reporters that “Rumsfeldian” incompetence by then-DNC Chairman Howard Dean had let Republicans narrowly hold onto around 20 seats. That’s 10 fewer than even Carville had been hoping for, according to Rove. (Democrats gained an additional seat, taking them to a gain of 30, in a Texas runoff in December.) But even these recollections obscure the fact, well known in late 2006, that gerrymandering gave the Democrats higher hills to climb — congressional district-rich states like Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan had been gerrymandered after the 2000 census by Republican governors and legislatures who created incredibly safe districts for their party. Only in 2008 did Democrats mop up most of the harder-to-win seats.

Here’s one repercussion of far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders surging in the polls and looking more and more like his county’s next prime minister. While Wilders has a robust community of support in America — in some circles he’s considered a hero for his campaign against Islam — Glenn Beck went after Wilders on his TV show as an example of how far-right fascism can rise in a crisis.

The video’s been pulled, but here’s a transcript.

In France, polls have this guy, the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, he is center-right. He’s hitting now new lows. Look out, because whoever is ruling now in any country no matter what, as this economy tanks and they spend all this money and it doesn’t matter if they’re right or left, as they tank, they’re going to become extraordinarily unpopular. So his approval rating is down to 36 percent. However, this guy, far right, Villepin (sic) — he’s at 57 percent.

Also, you have far right Dutch M.P. Geert Wilders. Last year, he was banned from the U.K. They said his presence could threaten community a harmony and therefore public safety. Last week, not only was he allowed into England, he was at the House of Lords, where he screened a film on the Quran.

The right and left are growing again in Europe. The left — listen carefully — the left in Europe is communism. The right is fascism, in Europe.

Europe is making the same mistakes that they made at the turn of the century. Mark my words — watch, please, do me a favor. We don’t have enough staff to watch this and nobody else is looking for it. Please, watch the crazy fringe groups over in Europe and e-mail. Tweet them to me at Glenn Beck on Twitter. Please, watch them as a watchdog, because they’re headed down the wrong tracks and we have to be prepared.

Pamela Geller, an increasingly prominent conservative blogger who helped organize a mini-conference on jihad at CPAC — and who has appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show — laid into Beck for smearing Wilders.

Why would he stigmatize Wilders this way? Wilders is the embodiment of what our founding fathers extolled. Individual rights. Freedom of speech. Not sharia law.

Was Beck saying that the UK was right to ban Wilders in the interest of “community harmony?” And the fact that he was allowed to enter the UK last week was a dire sign?

He runs videos of the riots in Greece, but never runs the Muslim rampages throughout Europe.

Beck is out of his depth in this. You cannot get up to speed on Europe in one crash course. The Islamic/left-wing fringe is everywhere, but what right fringe is he talking about in Europe? It can’t be Le Pen, he is nowhere. Is this going after SIOE, and the EDL?

Is this going to be be Beck’s narrative? If so, he is wrong. And he ought to be silent until he learns everything.

Via Matt Yglesias and Charles Johnson, who wonders “how the heck did Beck ever get this one right?”

The defeated Conservative candidate in NY-23 is, as expected (and as he would quietly inform people at CPAC), going for a rematch with Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.). Hoffman, assured of the Conservative Party’s nomination, is gunning for the GOP and Independence Party nominations, too — both went to Dede Scozzafava last time, while the Independence Party rhetorically supported Owens after Scozzafava dropped out.

Hoffman rather infamously un-conceded the race after counting errors revealed that he’d lost by a smaller margin than expected; he conceded again, and that issue disappeared.

The full statement, from his campaign:

Since early January I have been weighing the idea of once again running for the 23rd Congressional District seat. During that time I travelled throughout the district, meeting and speaking with men and women who supported me in last fall’s hard fought campaign. I did a lot of listening. Their words of encouragement and continued support touched my heart and soul. Their kind thoughts are often repeated to me by total strangers who have approached me while I am at the gas station, in the grocery store, or out to dinner with Carol, my wife.

Back in January I commissioned a poll. The results were encouraging. The poll showed that 74% of Republicans who vote in primaries thought I should run again. 71% thought I could win back the congressional seat in next November’s election. But, perhaps more importantly, the vast majority of Republicans said they would cast their vote for me in a Republican primary.

But, perhaps, what has influenced me the most is what I have seen and heard in my professional life, not my political one. As many of you know I am a Certified Public Accountant. My firm has five offices across the Congressional District and literally thousands of clients. January through April is our “busy season” as we prepare tax returns for clients that represent an economic cross cross-section of New York and the nation.

The words repeated by client after client were that the tax burdens and government regulations they face are breaking their back and that the direction this nation heading is breaking their spirit. The dysfunction and corruption in Albany and Washington is filling them with disgust and they are worrying what will be the future for their children and grandchildren.

Their words of despair have filled me with resolve. They made me realize the fight we face is bigger than any one individual. If we do not shift the balance of power in Washington and Albany this year, our chance may be lost.

I have discussed my decision with my family and they are totally supportive. I now want to take this opportunity to let you know that I will be formally entering the race for the 23rd Congressional District seat and this time we will defeat Bill Owens!

The months ahead will be filled with hard work; because, I realize you don’t inherit a nomination…you have to work for it. I plan to work hard to deserve the nomination of the Republican, Conservative and Independence Parties and unite them, as one team, to defeat the agenda of Nancy Pelosi and Bill Owens.

I will champion the fight for less spending, lower taxes, and shrinking the deficit. I will speak out about the need to defend our nation and the freedoms of its people. And, I will never back down from taking on the career politicians who conveniently forget that they represent and work for you; average American citizens, not the Special Interests who fill the back rooms of Washington with lobbyists and fill the campaign coffers of elected officials with money.

I will fight hard for our soldiers at Fort Drum, our dairy farmers, our small business people, our children and our seniors; all the people who live and work in our district.

I hope I can once again count on your support and hopefully have the opportunity to speak with you between now and Election Day.

Sincerely,

Doug Hoffman

John Bresnahan’s story this morning explores the praise former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has been soaking up on the right — accolades from Rush Limbaugh, a spot today on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show. And as Bresnahan hints, the plaudits are coming from right-wing entertainers and media stars more than from anyone else.

Massa’s incredible radio meltdown over the weekend was tailor-made for talk radio and TV. It led the Drudge Report for much of Monday — today, Drudge is focusing on the not-so-subtle gay innuendo that Rahm Emanuel “thugs around gym showers.” And on the snippets I heard of talk radio yesterday, hosts delighted in how Massa validated their narrative of the Obama administration as a thuggish (always that word) Chicago mob that had the power to, say, initiate bipartisan ethics committee investigations of political enemies. Mark Levin, whose shtick is that of a brainy conservative lawyer who’s had enough, played clips of Massa bellyaching about the conspiracies against him — Levin, back in the studio, darkly intoned what this proved about the “Chicago machine.”

Fox News has had some trouble making this narrative stick. Last night’s episode of Greta Van Susteren’s show began with the host breathlessly reporting that Massa claimed to have been offered a “bribe” by unions — his word for union offers of electoral support if he voted for health care. When Van Susteren and guest Rick Santorum tried to delve deeper, they… well, here’s what happened:

SANTORUM: I — it’s — it’s irrational behavior. I don’t understand why he’s doing it. If he was as angry as he was at being forced out, he should have stayed. I mean…

VAN SUSTEREN: But was he really forced out? They’re having an investigation. I mean, his behavior — I mean…

SANTORUM: Yes. Investigating someone is not forcing someone out. I mean…

VAN SUSTEREN: Right. He was being investigated.

SANTORUM: He was being investigated. And I understand, you know, he’s obviously under a lot of pressure. There’s all these bizarre stories about Rahm Emanuel and — and what — you know — I don’t know. I don’t know…

VAN SUSTEREN: The nakedness in the shower. We got that on “Hannity.”

SANTORUM: Yes, OK, good. I…

VAN SUSTEREN: We don’t have to do the naked shower one.

This probably won’t end with a lot of glory for Massa or his short-term allies.

A still from Keep America Safe's "Al Qaeda Seven" ad (YouTube) and Cully Stimson (heritage.org)

One of the things Charles “Cully” Stimson remembers about the interview that cost him his job is just how run down he was when it happened. His January 11, 2007 sit-down with Federal News Radio, said Stimson, was one of 40 interviews he’d given that week. That’s one of the reasons the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs stumbled so badly when talking about a Freedom of Information Act request that would have revealed the names of attorneys who were defending prisoners detained at Gitmo.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“When corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001,” said Stimson to Fed News, “those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks.”

The comment, coming only days after Democrats took charge of both houses of Congress, blew up in Stimson’s face. Within three weeks, he had resigned. He apologized to the lawyers that he “allegedly was slamming.” He would never have done such a thing. Cut to last week, when he saw an ad by Keep America Safe, a national security think tank founded by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol, that demanded the names of attorneys who’d defended Gitmo detainees — what it called “the Al Qaeda Seven” — and gone on to work for the Department of Justice.

“I think the blowback against me,” Stimson told TWI, “especially the ad hominem attacks, was unfair. And I think that these ad hominem attacks — calling the Department of Justice, where I proudly served, the Department of Jihad — are disgusting.”

Over the weekend, Stimson joined 19 other conservative lawyers, many of them fellow veterans of George W. Bush’s administration, signed a letter condemning Keep America Safe for “a shameful series of attacks on attorneys in the Department of Justice.” The letter, written by Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution, compared what the lawyers did to what John Adams did in defending the soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. One reason Stimson signed the letter, he told TWI, was that his “controversial” 2007 episode would bring more attention to a cause he supported.

One week after Keep America Safe launched the campaign, the strategy of Stimson and co-signers like Ken Starr and David Rivkin appeared to have paid off with plenty of articles about their criticism and a partial apology from CNN for the way it packaged its segment on the subject. But the pushback is unlikely to become what critics hoped it might — a humbling moment for Cheney, Kristol, and neoconservatives who aim to move the administration’s national security policy closer to that of the Bush administration. Sources close to Keep America Safe acknowledged that its “Al Qaeda Seven” ad had played poorly in Washington, but were confident that the “conservatives versus Cheney” story had played itself out without dealing a substantial blow to national security conservatives.

On Monday, the effort by conservative attorneys to criticize Keep America Safe had apparently peaked. In op-eds and in conversations with TWI, other Bush administration veterans largely defended Cheney, even if they agreed that the TV ad had gone too far. Curt Levey, a Bush DOJ veteran who now runs the Committee for Justice — one of several conservative legal groups that vets Obama nominees for court slots — told TWI that the criticism could have been headed off had Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) received, as he had requested, the names of the DOJ lawyers who’d done work for terrorism suspects. (The names, as Fox News would find, could be located with some digging on the internet.)

“Attorney General [Eric] Holder brought this controversy on himself by resisting Grassley’s reasonable request,” said Curt Levey. “Despite the usual rhetorical excesses of political ads, Keep America Safe has not argued that the Al Qaeda Seven’s past work disqualifies them from working at DOJ. So the Human Rights Watch letter is aimed, at least in part, at a straw man argument. I would add that it’s curious that many of the Democrats who defended Holder’s refusal to disclose are the very same folks who gleefully investigated every detail of the Bush Justice Department’s hiring practices in the hope of proving that the department deliberately tried to increase the paltry representation of conservatives among the ranks of DOJ’s career attorneys.”

A similar argument came from Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, in the column he now writes for The Washington Post. “Where was the moral outrage when fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack?” wrote Thiessen. “Their critics did not demand simple transparency; they demanded heads. They called these individuals ‘war criminals’ and sought to have them fired, disbarred, impeached and even jailed. Where were the defenders of the ‘al-Qaeda seven” when a Spanish judge tried to indict the ‘Bush six‘? Philippe Sands, author of the ‘Torture Team,’ crowed: ‘This is the end of these people’s professional reputations!’ I don’t recall anyone accusing him of ’shameful’ personal attacks.”

Hans Von Spakovsky, a former counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Bush administration — and like Stimson, now a Heritage Foundation scholar — aligned himself with Cheney. “I don’t think it is unfair or somehow improper to criticize those lawyers who have volunteered to help the enemies of the United States who are dedicated to killing as many innocent Americans as possible and destroying our country,” Von Spakovsky told TWI. “I certainly don’t think those same lawyers should be in the Justice Department directing policy and making decisions on prosecutions of those same terrorists. That would be like hiring Mob lawyers in the Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force or hiring someone who volunteered to defend the Klu Klux Klan in the Civil Rights Division. Those lawyers who all come from big firms have a wide choice of who to help on a pro bono basis and their choice of terrorists says a lot about them –- I would not hire them to represent my company, either, if I were still a corporate in-house counsel, because I would not want my company’s money subsidizing that kind of legal work.”

One week after Keep America Safe launched its campaign, there was more evidence of rallying behind Keep America Safe than of more conservatives turning on Cheney. Allies of the group laughed off the idea that Democrats could stoke more controversy by re-enacting the legislative drubbing that Republicans gave MoveOn.org for its 2007 ad asking whether Gen. David Petraeus would mislead in his testimony about Iraq and become “General Betray-Us.” Democrats, they argued, knew that they didn’t have a long-term winning argument to buttress the murmurs of conservative anger. In his conversation with TWI, Stimson poured cold water on any Democrats who hoped he’d become a steady critic of Keep America Safe.

“I like Bill Kristol,” he said. “I like Debra Burlingame. If I met Liz Cheney, I’m sure I’d like her, too.”

Tory Newmeyer confirms that Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) will resign from Congress this afternoon, ending any drama over whether he would stick around to help block health care reform legislation, and freeing him up to rant about his situation.

Well, this isn’t going to soothe the GOP’s internal critics of Michael Steele, who worry that his celebrity distracts him from the party’s message. He stars in a new 60-second ad — he’s onscreen for 30 second of it, and narrates the rest — telling viewers to visit a new RNC website. (Hat tip: Peter Hamby.)

This is all ahead of Steele visiting cities in Florida, Oklahoma and North Carolina; TPM reports that the DNC will run ads ripping the RNC “fear” presentation in those cities.

Rep. Eric Massa’s (D-N.Y.) scorching attack on Democrats — while a lot of attention is going to a silly story about Rahm Emanuel, he accuses his party of trying to “shove the [health care] bill down our throats” — will be amplified tomorrow with a full-hour interview on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show.

In roughly 12 hours, Massa has changed his narrative from “congressman resigning in disgrace” to angry, Howard Beale-esque truth-teller who’d simply had enough and will take his party to the woodshed. Left unsettled: the incredibly important issue of whether he’ll resign today, as he said he would, or he’ll try to bring down the health care bill by staying in Congress.

Another poll, another big lead for Rand Paul, the insurgent candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky who really should be labeled the frontrunner now. SurveyUSA has Paul up 42-27 over Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state, in the GOP primary. The trendlines since the last SurveyUSA poll in November 2009:

Rand Paul – 42 (+7)
Trey Grayson – 27 (-5)
Bill Johnson – 5 (+3)

Paul’s done an impressive job of uniting Tea Party activists behind him and an equally successful job of debunking Grayson’s charge that Paul’s libertarian views would lead to surrenders on social conservative issues. The primary is in two months.

Via Jim Antle.

Medicine Hat News reports on a speech Sarah Palin gave in Calgary (tickets as low as $150), where a folksy monologue took a shocking turn — an admission about how her family once received health care.

We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic.

Palin, born in Idaho, lived in and around Wasilla, Alaska for most of her life. The nearest city in Canada, Whitehorse, is a 15 hour drive away. Anchorage is only 45 minutes away. I definitely want to hear more about this.

UPDATE: I just checked my copy of “Going Rogue” and recall now that Palin spent the first few years of her life, up to age 6, in Skagway, a remote town in gold rush country only a few rough hours from Whitehorse. But it’s about as far from Skagway to Juneau, so the question remains why the family “hustled” to a country with, at the time, the beginnings of government-run health care.

UPDATE: The Calgary Herald has a fuller, slightly different version of the quote.

My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse. Believe it or not – this was in the ‘60s – we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.

Via Will Bunch.

The incredibly successful, punchy conservative messaging firm — one year ago, it was dumping negative ads into the NY-20 special election — is back with an anti-health care reform bill campaign. Some of this is doubling the efforts of Republicans who are robocalling vulnerable Democrats. Some of this seems at odds with real-world politics: Virginia’s “Thomas Perreilli” (sic) is not going to buckle and vote against the bill.

The campaign’s logo:

And the email appeal:

Dear Fellow Conservative:

Blue Dog Democrats control the future of our country. Unless we convince enough Blue Dogs to repent and standup against Speaker Pelosi’s American-hating “progressive” agenda, healthcare will pass.

I hate to say I told you so… I predicted this would happen on the day Scott Brown was elected! In a letter I wrote, “The Democrats intend to pull out their army of slimy lawyers, lobbyists and deceitful legislative tactics to pass their disastrous healthcare bill. Their counter-offensives will continue changing… bypassing Scott Brown and his 60th vote in the U.S. Senate.” WE WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN!

The National Republican Trust, the nation’s third largest PAC, is running a series of radio ads to force the Blue Dog’s hands and kill Obama’s disastrous healthcare bill. We are the ones the Democrats fear most. With your help we have been fighting this healthcare bill from the beginning and we have now forced them to do what we said they would end up doing all along. These ads will expose the liberal Democrats masquerading as Blue Dogs and lay the foundation for a historic election for conservatives in November.

LISTEN TO OUR FIRST AD

It is imperative that we come together and stand firm because Obama and Pelosi remain hell bent on passing healthcare despite recent electoral defeats and dreadful poll numbers. The Wall Street Journal writes, “What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a (healthcare) bill merely because… they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.”

The best way to defeat healthcare is to peel off as many Blue Dog Democrats as possible. We will shine the light of truth on their voting record for all their constituents to see.

CLICK HERE TO HELP KEEP THESE ADS ON THE AIR

A Strategy To Defeat Healthcare And Retake Congress

The National Republican Trust PAC is committed to leading way just as we did in Massachusetts when we backed Scott Brown and when we paved the way for crucial Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey last fall. We are also the ones who warned the nation of Obama radical socialist agenda even before he was elected. WE HAVE BEEN AHEAD OF EVERYONE in our warnings about the direction Obama, Reid and Pelosi would be taking us. It is our strategy that has kept them from passing the worst part of their agenda.

We have been watching them and reading their every move and employed careful counter-strategies to blunt their corrupt tactics. Since they started trying to pass this legislation over a year ago The National Republican Trust has been fighting them every step of the way. This important ad campaign can finish our fight!

We are in the process of personalizing this ad for the top 10 most vulnerable Democrats. Each of our targets voted in favor of Obamacare last fall. They were each elected from conservative districts won by the McCain/Palin ticket but on average they support Pelosi’s radical agenda 77% of the time.

Every one of our targets acts like a conservative at home but votes like a liberal in Washington. They include:

Baron Hill, IN

Chris Carney, PA

Zach Space, OH

John Salazar, CO

Harry Mitchell, AZ

Gabrielle Giffords, AZ

Michael Arcuri, NY

Earl Pomeroy, ND

Alan Mollohan, WV

Thomas Perreilli, VA

CNN has already reported on this campaign and the Democrats are starting to come unglued. We will continue expanding this list with each and every turn they make!

The National Republican Trust is actively buying as much airtime as possible. We are fully committed to continuing this fight until we permanently defeat healthcare. We can do this but we need your help.

Please join with us and keep these ads coming as often as possible.

GO HERE TO HELP TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!

Please forward this important message to family and friends. We need as many soldiers as possible. It is critical that we come together now to save our country from the progressives.

THE PELOSI INDEX

The ad campaign is based on our PELOSI INDEX, an online analysis and rating database designed to hold members of Congress accountable for the votes they cast and to show how often they side with Pelosi.

If you have not done so already please go to www.PELOSIINDEX.com to see how your member of Congress votes.

Many Democrats campaign as conservatives but their voting record tells a different story. Their own actions make them the most vulnerable Members of Congress.

Highlights of THE PELOSI INDEX include: (Score = percent of time voting for Pelosi’s agenda)

• 233 Democrats received a score of 70% or higher.
• 141 Democrats received a 100% score by always siding with Pelosi.
• 33 Democrats in Districts won by McCain received a score of 70% or higher.
• 34 Blue Dog Democrats received a score of 70% or higher.
• 7 Blue Dog Democrats received a 100% score.
• 18 Blue Dogs in Districts won by McCain received a score of 70% or higher.

Go here to see the entire Pelosi Index

Please forward this link to all of your friends and family so they to can learn the truth and help us win back our country!

Our series of ads will expose the liberal voting records of the most vulnerable Democrats elected in conservative districts. We will show the American public that there is no such thing as a conservative Blue Dog Democrat. Blue Dogs are just pawns of Pelosi!

GO HERE TO EXPOSE THESE BLUE DOGS

They Can’t Hide From Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi is by far and away the most radical Speaker in U.S. history. She has pushed through her socialist agenda and massively expanded the size, scope and cost of government. Despite struggling American families, she continues to peddle massive tax increases and impose catastrophic debt levels onto future generations before traversing the globe in her taxpayer funded military jet.

Now she is trying once again to force feed Obama’s government healthcare package on us. No doubt Cap and Trade, card check and other economy crushing policies adored by the “progressives” will follow this. It is some coincidence that all of their solutions – to problems they created – give more power to them and takeaway more liberty from us.

The good news is that Pelosi’s radical, elitist actions have driven her approval rating to record lows and made her our greatest weapon for defeating healthcare and taking back Congress this year.

Our ads will unleash the Plague of Pelosi on all vulnerable Democrats. Not even the liberal media will be able to protect them once we expose their habitual support for Pelosi’s agenda.

GO HERE TO SINK PELOSI’S AGENDA

Exposing the Truth

We are starting with this ad and will personalize it for every vulnerable Democrat. We will be developing TV ads with the same concept of Liberty vs. the Left Wing. We will make them pay the price for selling out our country.

This campaign will draw a clear contrast between freedom and the radical agenda they support. We will draw a line in the sand for the whole country to see. If they support healthcare their voters will know about it immediately.

We will run this campaign in our usual clever way to grab the attention of their voters and expose their true voting records. We are going to make them famous or rather infamous for what they are doing!

We will be producing more of these and you can help us get the ball rolling right away.

With your support, we will expose the truth and set the stage for the conservative resurgence this fall.

GO HERE NOW TO GET MORE ADS ON THE AIR

Together We Can Do It

Until these liberals acting as conservatives at home are exposed, the Democrats will continue to shove their liberal policies through the halls of Congress. The National Republican Trust is fully committed to exposing the truth behind every vote.

With your support our ad campaign will derail Pelosi’s radical agenda and position conservative Republicans to retake Congress.

Help Stop Pelosi’s Radical Transformation of America! CLICK HERE TO SEND PELOSI’S PALS PACKING.

Thank you for your generosity. Conservatives like you have allowed us to stay ahead of the curve on important issues and to have a significant impact on the advancement of conservative policies and candidates.

Join with me and help take our country back. GO HERE NOW.

Yours for America,

Scott Wheeler
Executive Director
www.goptrust.com

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), the disgraced resigning congressman, is going down swinging and taking the news cycle with him. His weekly radio show — and, likely, any media he does today — is a festival of criticism of the White House, specifically of Rahm Emanuel.

When I voted against the cap and trade bill, the phone rang and it was the chief of staff to the president of the United States of America, Rahm Emanuel, and he started swearing at me in terms and words that I hadn’t heard since that crossing the line ceremony on the USS New Jersey in 1983. And I gave it right back to him, in terms and words that I know are physically impossible. If Rahm Emanuel wants to come after me, maybe he ought to hold himself to the same standards I’m holding myself to and he should resign.

Massa has also explained just what he’s resigning over.

Joseph Farah, who sparred over the “birther” conspiracy theory with Andrew Breitbart at the National Tea Party Convention, pens a lengthy column — a promo for his own convention — attacking CPAC organizers for not holding a birther panel. It’s interesting in the same way that the Oscar for “Music by Prudence” was interesting. Farah holds grudges against Republican strategist Jon Henke (who has campaigned to purge “birtherism” from the GOP) and CPAC Director Lisa De Pasquale.

I decided right there and then that [WorldNetDaily] would no longer sponsor CPAC as long as an arrogant, know-it-all wannabe like De Pasquale was running it. When others confronted De Pasquale on her ill manners, unprofessionalism and condescension, she finally wrote me an e-mail. But it was hardly the letter of apology one might expect under the circumstances. She explained that she was “just answering questions from the media.”

Apparently, De Pasquale and the CPAC leadership are more concerned about pleasing the media than their long-time sponsors and speakers – even people like me who are under siege from the left, the soft-right and the media establishment.

The funny thing is that Farah got a shout-out from the CPAC stage from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who bragged about getting a relative to read WND, and that birthers, while denied most stages at the conference, were not hard to find. Henke laughed it off.

“Some of it may be colorably ‘opinion,’” Henke said to TWI, “but I certainly did not have ‘multiple appearances, on MSNBC. I was on once. I think the biggest story in that is his claim that Democrats spent more on WND than Republicans. Oh, really?”

Anyway, here’s the site for Farah’s own Taking America Back convention, to be held in Florida in September. Warning: Music.

In the wake of his somewhat surprising — and very soft-peddled — victory in the CPAC straw poll, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is gearing up for a big showing at the next GOP cattle call. Paul’s Campaign for Liberty is going to purchase hundreds of tickets for the event, held next month in New Orleans.

If a CPAC-sized contingent of Paul fans show up, would it be enough to win the event’s straw poll? Well, in 2006, Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) won the straw poll with a 36.9 percent plurality — of only 1,427 ballots.

An email with some info about the big buy, after the jump:

Subject: Help Support Dr. Paul in New Orleans (your eyes only!)
To:
Date: Friday, March 5, 2010, 2:58 PM

Hey Guys!

So I am inviting you to work with C4L and to come support Dr. Paul once again! This time its April 8-11 and its in New Orleans, LA!
There is no need to volunteer for this, we are just asking for you to come out and help us in being apart of the http://www.srlc2010.com/ and help support Dr. Paul!

We will have discounted tickets (so don’t buy the tickets through the link above!) which you can purchase within the next week!
I am personally asking you to help me in this as I consider you to be a friend and leader in this movement and could use your help in recruiting others!

Here is the deal I have for you (please keep this between us!):

Deeply Discounted ticket to this
Free Tshirt
Incentives: If you get 25 folks signed up your ticket is free!! (We will have promo codes on the SRLC C4L webpage- get those you recruit to put in your name so we can keep track of how many you get)
Upon supporting us, Dr. Paul will be holding a reception for supporters and attendees which will Dr. Paul and adult beverages!

Please let me know your availability and if you can help me in recruiting!
Thank you sincerely.

Please let me know if you can help me in this!

The rapid implosion of Rep. Eric Massa’s (D-N.Y.) career will end with his resignation from Congress on Monday, less than a week after he announced that he had terminal cancer — and the Ethics Committee announced that he was under investigation.

“I am a deeply flawed and imperfect person,” said Massa in a statement. “There is no doubt in my mind that I did in fact, use language in the privacy of my own home and in my inner office that, after 24 years in the Navy, might make a Chief Petty Officer feel uncomfortable.  In fact, there is no doubt that this Ethics issue is my fault and mine alone.  But in the incredibly toxic atmosphere that is Washington D.C., with the destruction of our elected leaders having become a blood sport, especially in talk radio and on the internet, there is also no doubt that an Ethics investigation would tear my family and my staff apart.”

The resignation opens up a door for Democrats, who now need only 216 “aye” votes in the House to pass a health care reform bill. Massa, who wanted a single-payer reform bill, had voted against the House bill last November.

The full statement on Massa’s website:

Two days ago as I sat reading my new annual CAT scan, having been told that the anomalies in the films may or may not be scar tissue, I decided to finally take the advice that my doctors have repeatedly given me, and that is to take care of my family and myself before my profession. After I decided not to run again I was told, for the first time, that a member of my staff believed I had made statements that made him feel “uncomfortable.”   I was told that a report had been filed with the Congressional Ethics Committee.  At no point prior to this had any member of the Ethics Committee communicated with me directly – if fact I first read it on the internet.

I own this reality.  There is no doubt in my mind that I did in fact, use language in the privacy of my own home and in my inner office that, after 24 years in the Navy, might make a Chief Petty Officer feel uncomfortable.  In fact, there is no doubt that this Ethics issue is my fault and mine alone.  But in the incredibly toxic atmosphere that is Washington D.C., with the destruction of our elected leaders having become a blood sport, especially in talk radio and on the internet, there is also no doubt that an Ethics investigation would tear my family and my staff apart. Some would say that this is what happens when you stand apart from political parties, which I have done.  Others will say that this is what happens to a non politician when they go to Washington DC.  I want to make something perfectly clear.  My difficulties are of my own making. Period.  I am also aware that blogs and radio will have a field day with this in today’s destructive and unforgiving political environment.  In that investigators would be free to ask anything about me going back to my birth, I simply cannot rise to that level of perfection.  God knows that I am a deeply flawed and imperfect person.

During long car rides, in the early hours of the evening, late at night and always in private, I know that my own language failed to meet the standards that I set for all around me and myself.  I fell short and I believe now, as I have always believed, that it is not enough to simply talk the talk, but rather I must take action to hold myself accountable.

Therefore, effective at 5 PM on Monday the 8th of March I will resign my position as the Federal Representative of New York’s 29th Congressional District in the 111th Congress.  I do so with a profound sense of failure and a deep apology to all those whom, for the past year, I tried to represent as our Nation struggles with problems far greater than anyone can possibly imagine.  I hope that my family, constituents, and fellow Members of Congress can accept this apology as being both genuine and heartfelt and I wish for them and all Americans only the best.  I will take all actions possible to ensure that my personal health is secured in that I know that mine is a far more fragile lifeline than most.  For the millions of fellow cancer survivors with whom I share this experience, they, more than anyone else, will understand the honesty and openness in this statement.

I ask that members of the press respect the privacy of my family, my staff, and me at this time.

-Congressman Eric Massa

ThinkProgress points to a strange item on the Bazpedia page of Pentagon metro shooter John Patrick Bedell, buried below the incomprehensible kookery (”I have posted the image to the right in order to illustrate the use of cannabis as a monetary system using digital financial instruments“) and a brief appreciation of libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises.

I am looking for collaborators for ongoing commercial and intellectual efforts. Email to jpbedell at mises.com is welcome!

ThinkProgress states that mises.com belongs to the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. Actually, the Institute is located at mises.org. But type in “mises.com” and you go to mises.org/community, a site that “features forums, live chat, user blogs, albums, groups, and more” for fans and supporters of the libertarian think tank. A Whois search says the domain is owned by Network Solutions, LLC, purchased in 1999 and bought up through 2015. I put in a call to the Institute to figure this out, but for now it’s more evidence that Bedell was a deranged person who grabbed onto various incompatible ideologies.

UPDATE: Commenter “albeit” uses another registration service and discovers that the Mises Institute does, in fact, own this address.

The Ludwig Von Mises Institute
518 West Magnolia Ave
Auburn, AL 36832
US

Domain Name: MISES.COM