Month: June 2011

Aw. John Tierney’s (D, MA-06) wife can’t go to a party!

Because of that pesky GPS bracelet on her calf.  Those big meanies in Massachusetts, making her stay under the indignity of house arrest for one, itty-bitty conviction of “iding and abetting the filing of false tax returns by her brother, Robert Eremian, a fugitive from federal charges of racketeering, illegal gambling, money laundering and witness tampering.”  I mean, she served a whole month of jail time for that!  What do they want, blood?

Yeah, I’ve written about this stituation before – also note here, where one of the district’s own papers is begging that the Massachusetts legislature end its agony and eliminate the district – and I’ll repeat: this is what happens when you have what is effectively an one-party state*.  Patrice Tierney got one month of jail time and two years’ worth of ‘supervised release:’ whether or not you think that was a reasonable punishment or not, it’s certainly an indication that it’s recognized that she did something wrong.  To invite her to a Democratic fundraiser anyway is not a ‘formality:’ it’s a confession that the people doing the invitation don’t agree that Tierney did something wrong. Continue reading Aw. John Tierney’s (D, MA-06) wife can’t go to a party!

OH MY GOD THEY CAUGHT WHITEY BULGER.

I never thought that they would.  I figured that he was dead, or something.  But they caught him, in… Santa Monica.  There’s going to be a lot of people out there unhappy about this, let me tell you.

…Damn.  If only my dad was alive to see this*.  Not that he had anything particularly against Whitey Bulger (except in a theoretical sense), but as a fellow Bostoner the man was always of interest to him.

Via @andylevy.

Moe Lane

*Mostly so that he could tell me “I told you so.”  Now I have to wait for it.

#rsrh “I’m on Fire.”

I’m On Fire, Bruce Springsteen

Dag, but we all got older, huh?

Moe Lane

PS: Don’t think of it as a week-long revisiting of Springsteen; think of it as a long-term plot to convince Gov. Chris Christie’s staff that they want to have him do an phone interview with me for RedState.  Which he totally should: all the cool governors do phone interviews with us…

Annnnnnd the hardshelled atheists largely miss the point, again.

I made a bet with myself that, when I finally tracked down all of the slogans for billboards picked by so-called ‘smiling atheists’ (H/T: @kevinholtsberry), that there were going to be a few where the smiles did not reach the eyes.  Winnowing through… well, let’s see. Continue reading Annnnnnd the hardshelled atheists largely miss the point, again.

Shelly Moore’s (D CAND, WI-SEN) UNETHICAL recall freeloading.

“We are not supposed to use school email, but… I don’t frankly care.*”

Before we go any further, let’s establish something right now.  As this complaint from the WI GOP shows (see more here), Shelly Moore was well aware that she was not supposed to be using her school account to coordinate and encourage both the Big Labor protests earlier in the year and recall efforts against Wisconsin Senators (particularly since she ended up being the Democratic candidate opposing State Senator Sheila Harsdorf).  This cannot be contested.  Shelly Moore herself admitted as such… in a work email:

 

Shelly Moore just didn’t care. That’s not a bowdlerization: she said, explicitly, “I don’t frankly care.”  Despite the fact that her activities violate an ethical pledge that Moore signed when she started working as a public school teacher.  Despite the fact that there are good and valid reasons why public sector employees must not give even the appearance of impropriety when it comes to separating out their private and public activities – let alone now, when Moore was in fact acting improperly.  Despite the fact that the state of Wisconsin gave her that email account in order to do her job, which was not “coordinate union- and Democrat-backed protests against the state government – while on the public dime.”  And despite the fact that Shelly Moore is in a position to personally profit quite nicely from all of these activities, given that she’s a candidate for political office now.  Nope.  None of these considerations matter.

Because Shelly Moore just doesn’t care.

Sheila Harsdorf for re-election to Wisconsin State Senate.  Unless, of course, you just don’t care, either.

Moe Lane (crosspost)
Continue reading Shelly Moore’s (D CAND, WI-SEN) UNETHICAL recall freeloading.

Oooh. Moe.moe as a domain name!

That’d be cool… oh.  ICANN wants $180 grand for it. (See more here, sent over from Constant Reader BigGator5.)

Ummm…





…no, that’s probably not going to fly, huh? Especially since I don’t actually qualify, not being a government or a nonprofit or whatnot.

Moe Lane

PS: For the love of God, somebody buy something on Amazon.com.

Well… no, you don’t actually have to. Dagnabbit, I always feel guilty when it comes to flogging people for cash.

#rsrh QotD, Not Quite What She Meant edition.

Ruth Marcus, on her largely-unhappy reaction at the way that Barack Obama has gutted the War Powers Act like a trout* – and in a fashion that demonstrates that Congressional Democrats have been casually lying to their liberal constituents for, well, apparently forever**:

The White House is the client. It can choose whether to ask its lawyers for advice — or which lawyers to ask. But sometimes even the smartest clients can behave like fools.

Yeah, and if even smart clients can be idiots then imagine how dumb the Obama administration could end up being.

Moe Lane

*Thanks, Barry!  Much obliged!

**The backstory on this is that Obama’s decision to simply ignore the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion on the War Powers Act has so infuriated Ruth Marcus that she’s comparing it to Bush’s… picking one side in the OLC’s internal dispute on warrantless wiretapping***.  Which is apparently the same thing to Ruth Marcus.

***Interestingly, I haven’t been able to find any actual second-person confirmation of James B Comey’s statement that multiple members of the Department of Justice from the top down were prepared to resign over this issue (even Comey’s Senate testimony doesn’t actually confirm that FBI Director Mueller and then Attorney General Ashcroft were planning to resign).  Maybe Mueller (one of the people who allegedly threatened to resign) will say more about this after he leaves the FBI?

Alcee Hastings’ (D, FL-23) sexual harassment investigation.

You cannot win if you never try.

This is a preliminary investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics, and it’s done in the wake of a March lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on behalf of former U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the Helsinki Commission) staffer Winsome Packer.  The suit alleges sexual harassment, attempted extortion (for Hastings’ re-election campaign), and acts of retaliation against Ms. Packer’s attempts at whistle-blowing.  According to the Judicial Watch suit (via Left Coast Rebel), informing then Commission Staff Director Fred Turner resulted in Turner’s joining with Rep. Hastings in said acts of retaliation; according to the Huffington Post, Sen. Ben Cardin (D, MD) (co-chair of the Helsinki Commission, then and now) and the then-Democratic-controlled House Ethics committee were likewise allegedly informed and did nothing (a Cardin spokeswoman declined to comment).  It should also be noted that Turner is currently the “Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the Co-Chairman at the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe” and one of Sen. Cardin’s key people.

In a better world, I could have some hope that the ultimate conclusion would be in doubt, but here is a hard truth: no matter what the investigation discovers or the lawsuit concludes, Alcee Hastings will probably still be a Congressman afterward.  This is for three interconnected reasons: Continue reading Alcee Hastings’ (D, FL-23) sexual harassment investigation.