Saturday, August 26, 2006

Laffey: “We thought it was funny.” (11:53 pm)

From the Ann Coulter School of Poisoning Supreme Court Justice Jokes and Wishing Tim McVeigh Blew Up the New York Times Comedy:

GOP winger Stephen Laffey explains columns written when he was a college student:

”Do I regret some of these things? Sure,” he said. ”But at the time, we were just having fun. We thought it was funny.”

The Republican candidate wrote them in 1983 and 1984 while studying at Bowdoin College in Maine. The articles appeared in a paper published by campus Republicans.

In one column, Laffey said he has never seen a happy homosexual.

”This is not to say there aren’t any; I simply haven’t seen one in my lifetime. Maybe they are all in the closet,” he wrote. ”All the homosexuals I’ve seen are sickly and decrepit, their eyes devoid of life.”

In another column he wrote that pop music was turning the children of America into sissies, and criticized the singer Boy George, referring to him as ”it.”

”It wears girl’s clothes and puts on makeup,” he wrote. ”When I hear it sing, ‘Do you really want to hurt me, do you really want to make me cry,’ I say to myself, YES, I want to punch your lights out, pal, and break your ribs.”

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“Secret Hold” On Accountability Legislation (5:52 pm)

Rebecca Carr for the Cox News Service reports that an anonymous Senator has placed a hold on legislation - S.2590 passed unanimously out of committee - that would create a searchable database for government contracting that would bring transparency to federal spending, and be as simple to use as conducting a Google search.

Via SusanG at dailykos, who also says that Porkbusters has already begun a campaign to unearth the shy senator, to hold her or him accountable.

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Rhode Island GOP Senate Primary Gets Some Notice (8:40 am)

Shailagh Murray for WaPo has a 2-pager on the GOP race between incumbent Lincoln Chafee and right-winger challenger Stephen Laffey. It’s long been known that Chaffee has himself some trouble, but maybe now this race will begin to get some more Big Media attention.

The Democratic nominee for the general election is Sheldon Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general.

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Friday, August 25, 2006

GOP Threatening TV Stations for Running MoveOn Ads That Expose GOP Sleaze (12:11 pm)

Jay Jochnowitz, in The Albany Times Union reports that “U.S. Rep. John Sweeney has gotten one of the region’s best known lawyers to ask TV stations to pull a brutal MoveOn.Org ad against the congressman.”

MoveOn’s criticism of Sweeney - and his threat against the media in response - is only the latest instance of what has become now a routine GOP tactic in trying to suppress campaign opposition, as recently reported by In These Times’ editor Joel Bleifuss, in his article on MoveOn’s “Caught red-handed” TV ads.

via Tracy Van Slyke

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GOP Intel Report “A Campaign Document, A Product of the Republican Strategy of Scaring Americans (8:39 am)

NY Times editorial “Wanted: Scarier Intelligence”

It is partly a campaign document, a product of the Republican strategy of scaring Americans into allowing the G.O.P. to retain control of Congress this fall. It fits with the fearmongering we’ve heard lately — like President Bush’s attempt the other day to link the Iraq war to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But even more worrisome, the report seems intended to signal the intelligence community that the Republican leadership wants scarier assessments that would justify a more confrontational approach to Tehran. It was not the work of any intelligence agency, or the full intelligence panel, or even the subcommittee that ostensibly drafted it. The Washington Post reported that it was written primarily by a former C.I.A. official known for his view that the assessments on Iran are not sufficiently dire.

While the report contains no new information, it does dish up dire-sounding innuendo, mostly to leave the impression that Iran is developing nuclear weapons a lot faster than intelligence agencies have the guts to admit. It also tosses in a few conspiracy theories, like the unsupported assertion that Iran engineered the warfare between Israel and Hezbollah. And it complains that America’s spy agencies are too cautious, that they “shy away from provocative conclusions.”

Via Laura Rozen guesting for Kevin Drum, who asks: “Is anyone in Congress doing any serious work on the Iran issue? Or by the way, on the Iraq issue? As the WP’s Thomas Ricks said on a BookTV interview about his new book on the Iraq war, Fiasco, there has never been a war in the past century of American history in which there have been basically no hearings, no important investigations. Instead, we get this?”

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Thursday, August 24, 2006

Critics Blame Rorschach For What They Choose To See In Blots Of Ink (11:21 pm)

Norm at onegoodmove has the video.

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Morning-After Pill Without Prescription Okayed By FDA (8:46 am)

Andrew Bridges and Lauran Neergaard for AP report:

Women may buy the morning-after pill without a prescription — but only with proof they’re 18 or older, federal health officials decided Thursday. The
Food and Drug Administration ruling culminated a contentious three-year effort to ease access to the emergency contraceptive.

Girls 17 and younger still will need a doctor’s note to buy the pills, called Plan B, the FDA told manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.

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Can There Be Any Doubt Left That Lieberman Has Now De Facto Joined The GOP? (8:36 am)

Jane Hamsher poses the question to Harry Reid.