Tag: elijah cummings

Elijah Cummings contemplating running for US Senate in Maryland.

Well, I certainly hope that Elijah Cummings decides to run: “The 64-year-old Maryland Democrat is mulling whether to run for the Senate seat soon to be vacated by Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski who will not seek reelection in 2016 after nearly 30 years in office.” Then again, I’m more familiar with Maryland Democratic politics than other people are.  Or possibly just more cynical.

Here is the basic situation. There are nine Democrats in the Maryland Congressional delegation: two Senators, and seven representatives. Of those nine, seven are white people.  And you might be asking yourself, “Isn’t that a little weird?” After all, in 2012 Obama lost the white vote in Maryland, and got pretty much all of the black vote; which implies that the Democratic party in Maryland is going to about… well, based on my back-of-the-envelope (literally!) scribblings; about half black, half white. So why is it that African Americans are so under-represented in the Democratic party’s Maryland Congressional delegation? Continue reading Elijah Cummings contemplating running for US Senate in Maryland.

Trey Gowdy to Elijah Cummings: so, hey, Sidney Blumenthal profited from the Libyan civil war?

What was the saying, again? ‘No blood for oil?’

So Trey Gowdy sent a formal letter to Elijah Cummings over the latter’s intolerably and pettily partisan hackwork with regard to the Benghazi Committee (@RBPundit categorizes it as ‘BEASTMODE,’ which is highly accurate).  There are a lot of interesting things in this letter.  A lot of brutal commentary on Rep. Cummings’ willingness to say one thing in private and another in public, for example. But I found this part about Sidney Blumenthal to be highly entertaining reading:

Beyond the pure politics that were occurring at this time, perhaps more disturbing it that at the same time [Sidney] Blumenthal was pushing Secretary Clinton to war in Libya, he was privately pushing a business interest of his own in Libya that stood to profit from contracts with the new Libyan government – a government that would exist only after a successful U.S. intervention in Libya that deposed Qaddafi. This business venture was one he shared with Tyler Drumheller and Cody Shearer, the authors of the information sent to Secretary Clinton. It is therefore unsurprising that somebody who knew so little about Libya would suddenly become so interested in Libya and push an old friend in a powerful place to action – for personal profit. Continue reading Trey Gowdy to Elijah Cummings: so, hey, Sidney Blumenthal profited from the Libyan civil war?

Rep. Elijah Cummings issues an impotent threat letter to the Center for Medical Progress.

(H/T: @FrontLineMD) Let me give you yet another example of Why Elections Matter. Let us imagine, for a moment, that we lived in an alternate universe where the Democrats still retained control of the House of Representatives. Let us also imagine that, in this world, that the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) had still conducted a sting operation that had caught Planned Parenthood and associated corporate customers engaged in ghoulish baby-harvesting. If those two things were the case, then this would be a chilling excerpt:

A leading Democrat wants to know if anti-abortion activists broke any federal or state laws when filming a series of undercover videos of Planned Parenthood.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., asked the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress in a letter Thursday whether it used donations in its undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood. Cummings also wants to know if lawmakers were aware of any potential illegal activities surrounding the years-long investigation into Planned Parenthood.

Fortunately, Elijah Cummings is merely the Ranking Member of the Oversight Committee, not Chairman of it. That means more or less that he has precisely as much power to go after whistleblowers and muckrakers as the actual Chairman Jason Chaffetz will permit him. And seeing as Rep. Chaffetz has instead decided to start a probe on just how much federal money is propping up the baby-harvesting business, I suspect that Rep. Cummings will not find CMP’s response satisfactory. Continue reading Rep. Elijah Cummings issues an impotent threat letter to the Center for Medical Progress.

Interesting: Rep Elijah Cummings may be positioning himself for Maryland Senate run.

This man used to be my Congressman, and about the best I can say for Rep. Cummings is that he’s not the absolute worst Democratic politician in Maryland.  I don’t even really despise him; I’m just kind of contemptuous of the way that Cummings has done precisely zero beyond get himself nicely situated in the machine. It was a happy day when that racist redistricting plan the Maryland legislature shoved through shoved me into some other Democrat’s bailiwick; it meant that I could stop caring about Elijah Cummings directly, as it were. Continue reading Interesting: Rep Elijah Cummings may be positioning himself for Maryland Senate run.

Tweet of the Day, …I Don’t Even edition.

What the Hell, Congressman?

It was a happy day when they told me that Annapolis-based shenanigans had moved me out of Elijah Cummings’ district. It was just so embarrassing.

#rsrh I have been redistricted!

I got my new election card in the mail… and on the notice, there it was: an indication that my district has been changed, thanks to Maryland’s horrifically gerrymandered new maps.  WHICH IS GREAT.  I have no idea what Dutch Ruppersberger’s district’s new partisan numbers are, but they were D+7 last time; and Elijah Cummings’ (my pre-redistricting Congressman) was D+25.  There’s no chance at all that Ruppersberger did that well out of the process.

So: while the Democrats may have screwed over most of their constituents – particularly minority ones, who really should haven’t have had Montgomery County sliced up the way that it was* – at least I’m doing better out of the deal.

Moe Lane

*The question is, does the Supreme Court agree with me? Well, we’ll find out.

#rsrh Cummings ‘ready’ for Issa. (snicker)

Rep. Elijah Cummings* says that he’s “ready” to face down Rep. Darrell Issa when the latter takes over as House Oversight chair this week.  For those who don’t know him, Rep. Cummings is a fundamentally uninteresting Congressman who has been taking full advantage of racial gerrymandering for the last fourteen years to do… nothing at all, really.  His most noteworthy accomplishment in that time period, in fact, has been to yell at Mark McGwire over steroid use – which I am sure is all very nice, but it’s not exactly what I’d call consequential.

More importantly – and it’s the major reason for this post in the first place – I’d like to take this opportunity to remind the Democrats that they confidently announced that they were ‘ready’ for the 2010 elections, too.  They didn’t do a blessed thing to slow the avalanche down, but by gum they were ‘ready’ for it…

Moe Lane

*Who has the good fortune to be my Congressman, alas.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D, MD) ‘proud’ to join convicted thief.

I have the pleasure – loosely defined – of being in Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Congressional District; and I have somehow found myself on his political spam list. Today I got an email that included this:

On September 23rd, I was proud to join Principal Joy Savage, Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Thad Allen, Mayor Sheila Dixon, Former Congresswoman Helen Bentley and State Senator Nathaniel McFadden (with students) to celebrate the grand opening of the new Maritime Industries Academy in Baltimore.

Sheila Dixon, Sheila Dixon, Sheila Dixon: where have I heard that name before?

Baltimore mayor convicted of 1 gift card charge
By DAVID DISHNEAU (AP) – 45 minutes ago

BALTIMORE — Baltimore’s mayor was convicted Tuesday on a single charge of taking gift cards from a program intended for the city’s poor children and using them to buy electronics, including an Xbox video game system.

The misdemeanor charge could eventually lead to Sheila Dixon’s removal from office, but she said after the verdict she would return to City Hall and her attorneys said they would begin an appeal.

Ah, yes. That Sheila Dixon.  Personally, if I ended up sharing a podium with a woman who was about to get convicted of stealing from children, I’d not bring it to anyone’s attention: but then, Democratic politicians have their little ways, no?

Moe Lane