Richard Carmona (D CAND, AZ-SEN) REALLY wants you to know that he denies ever screaming at that woman.

You hear that? He says that it never happened.  Richard Carmona will be happy to keep telling you that, too. Over and over and over again.

Background here: the short version is that Carmona’s former boss cut an ad for Jeff Flake documenting alleged crypto-stalking behavior and general anger management issues (as in, Carmona can’t manage his) shown towards said boss by the candidate.  Given Carmona’s past history, particularly towards female managers, you can understand why Carmona would want to deny the charges.

Eighteen times, in a single interview.  Just in case you didn’t hear him any of the other times, apparently. Continue reading Richard Carmona (D CAND, AZ-SEN) REALLY wants you to know that he denies ever screaming at that woman.

A look at the brutal Flake ad on Carmona (AZ SEN).

To understand this ad from Jeff Flake whaling on Richard Carmona in the AZ-SEN race…

…you need to know the background. Essentially, the woman in the ad is former Acting Assistant HHS Secretary Cristina Beato, who was Carmona’s boss back when he was Surgeon General under GW Bush.  You might remember that Mr. Carmona had an epic meltdown and public break with the previous administration over supposed politicization of science; Ms. Beato was called in to testify about that, and gave testimony about Carmona that then-Oversight chair Henry Waxman (D) promptly put on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of The Leopard*.”  Essentially, Beato called Carmona a liar, multiple times; painted him as a strutting, narcissistic twit who liked to brag about his access to the President; brought up Carmona’s habit of using travel allowances to get free rides home to Arizona and California; and … this bit. Continue reading A look at the brutal Flake ad on Carmona (AZ SEN).

I bet Rep. Flake has a zombie plan, too.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R, AZ) spent a week on an uninhabited tropical island this summer doing survival-type activities: the Hill has the story and his journal.  It’s pretty interesting stuff; while his week was almost without incident, this sort of thing isn’t exactly easy to do, and Rep. Flake wasn’t bad at writing about it.

I think that this trip will gather a little more notice than Flake really expects, if only for the photo:

photo19_crop

Certainly the writer of the Hill article approved: it’s not every day that the phrase “tanned and sculpted torso” appears in that publication.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

‘Don’t be a Flake.’

The Democratic Party’s more important than your little, piddling districts, you see. And much more important than your principles.

They actually sent that out as the header of an email, in response to Rep. Flake’s latest attempt to get some sort of accountability in place over earmarks and internal corruption:

As the House prepared to vote this week on Republican Rep. Jeff Flake’s push for an ethics investigation involving Rep. John Murtha and other senior appropriators, Democratic leaders sent an unmistakable message to their members:

“Don’t be a Flake.”

That was the subject line of an e-mail that staffers for first- and second-term Democrats received Tuesday from Rep. Chris Van Hollen, assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The message said that Democrats would once again be “voting to table another Flake resolution” — and it made clear that leadership would have its eyes on any Democrats even thinking about defecting.

This is all political, of course – well, it’s all political on the Democratic side.  The long-term Democratic Congressmen (most of whom have never really recovered from the psychological trauma of losing the House in 1994) have precisely zero interest in turning off the spigots, now that their mouths are underneath them again; and the new crop of Democratic Congressmen are well aware that it’s going to take at least ten years for them to turn into long-term Democratic Congressmen, and they don’t really have ten years.  And that the long-term Congressmen don’t really care if a few Blue-in-Red districts flip back next year.  And that the only thing keeping Democrats together in Congress is…

Well, I’m sure that there’s something. In the meantime, marvel at a situation where wanting accountability makes you a partisan ‘flake.’ A definition that I am absolutely certain bemused such long-term members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy as Democracy 21, Common Cause, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG*.

Moe Lane

*H/T Instapundit.

Crossposted to RedState.

Carolyn McCarthy (D, NY-04): PMA Porker.

I mention this not so much because she’s unique – she isn’t, especially among Democrats – but because she has her eye on higher office these days.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) has made it clear that she may launch a primary challenge against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), whom McCarthy deems too conservative to represent one of the most liberal states in the country.

But McCarthy may have a problem of her own to clear up before she sets her sights on higher office. McCarthy’s top contributor this cycle is the now-defunct PMA Group.

Via Instapundit. The article goes on to note that McCarthy helped block an ethics probe into PMA’s shenanigans (presumably, the one of the ones initiated by Republican Jeff Flake). Say what you like about now-Senator Gillibrand, but her name is conspicuously absent from this list

Crossposted to RedState.

Rep. Jeff Flake’s anti-earmark resolution up today.

As you know, it’s in response to the PMA meltdown/outrage (see here for some background posts):

Rep. Flake targets earmarks amidst PMA controversy
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), the House’s most vocal critic of pork barrel spending, is trying to shake the ethics committee into action on the link between earmarks and campaign contributors.

Flake has seized on the public corruption investigation of PMA Group, a once-powerful lobbying force that has disintegrated in the wake of an FBI probe into fraudulent campaign donations to numerous members of Congress.

In the past 24 hours, Flake has highlighted earmarks in the omnibus appropriations bill for PMA clients, written a scathing op-ed to The New York Times about Congress’s pay-to-play practices and offered a privileged resolution on the House floor that would force the House ethics panel to scrutinize the connection between earmarks and campaign cash and report back to the full body in two months.

Continue reading Rep. Jeff Flake’s anti-earmark resolution up today.