""Bobby Kahn, chairman of the [Democratic] party, suggested [Governor Sonny] Perdue [R] broke anti-corruption laws by making a deal with the developer, who must get large projects reviewed by the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, whose board the governor appoints. "It appears as though Gov. Perdue sold his office to make himself wealthy. If so, he has committed a crime and should be going to prison," Kahn said during an afternoon press conference at the Capitol.""here's a thought. maybe the prison lobby bankrolled the repugs becuase they knew it would be good for business.
* your preznit speaks:
" By the way, anybody who follows me should always understand you must keep the pressure on the enemy; otherwise, they will put the pressure on us. "* tpmm:
"Duke Cunningham's Wife Speaks! (But Not to Us)
It's not a pretty picture: the night before Duke Cunningham was sentenced and taken into custody, he dumped a duffel bag filled with dirty underwear and $32,000 in $20 and $100 bills in his wife's driveway as a desperate attempt to salvage some of his ill-gotten gains.
That's according to Nancy Cunningham, Duke's estranged wife, who granted an exclusive interview to Kitty Kelley, queen of Washington dirt. Kelley's article will be out in this week's issue of The New Republic, but we got a sneak peek. The piece will be posted online later today.
Mrs. Cunningham (who says she promptly turned that bag of cash over to her attorney) also reveals that Duke -- whom she coldly refers to as "Mr. Cunningham" -- once slept with a knife and then a loaded gun under his pillow; that he frequently threw temper tantrums and once physically threatened Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) because he was passed over for a leadership position; that he planned to strike it big as a lobbyist after he left Congress; and that she called him "Mr. Fun Ball" because of his aggressive flirtation with women.
Nancy Cunningham gave the interview, Kelley says, to demonstrate her ignorance of her husband's misdeeds. But many will no doubt find that hard to believe. Her husband accepted $2.4 million in bribes, and she enjoyed a lot of what that money bought. She didn't become suspicious of the stream of valuable antiques, didn't question her husband's explanation of how they could afford a $2.6 million house (creative financing, a lobbying career), and generally turned a blind eye to his carousing. It wasn't a close marriage, she says."
* courts on spying, via tpmm:
"We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent power" must derive from that Constitution.""i'm not yet familiar with the details of this particular case - but my teeve is telling me that this program involves 'suspected terrorists calling from overseas.' i thought that we'd move on from this nonsense - but perhaps the case was limited to this particular
* TheDay via kathleen:
" “Maybe it's a coincidence, but I was surprised that they both came out of the box playing politics with the thwarted attack over the Atlantic,” Lamont said, referring to Lieberman and Cheney.
Voters in Connecticut, he added, in an aside directed at the vice president, “were touched in the most personal way” by al-Qaida's 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington. “
We don't need any sermons on the meaning of 9/11,” Lamont said."
* Billmon:
"However, our stability fetish (and our commercial interests) also required us to do business with brutal dictators and/or prop up corrupt feudal elites -- many of them little more than rent-seeking parasites perched on oil fields disguised as countries. Where authentic or semi-authentic nationalist movements appeared -- in Egypt, for example -- we either tried to crush them or buy them off, and usually managed to do one or the other."* wired via digby:
"Last February the Department of Homeland Security oversaw a large-scale international cyber terror simulation involving 115 public and private organizations in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, all testing their ability to coordinate with one another and respond to computer-driven attacks. It was called Cyber Storm.we are so toast.
Nobody's said much about the results, or the details of the exercise scenario. But a newly-published DHS PowerPoint presentation on the exercise reveals that the real terrorist threat in cyber space isn't from obvious suspects like al Qaida types or Connecticut voters; it's from anti-globalization radicals and peace activists."
* nyt:
" 'Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,' said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity."
2 comments:
lol
i suspect that cheney is quite impressed by the fact that Blinky can still manage to pull 35% JARs. imagine the jokes these people tell in private...
On the Dukestir...
Raw Story also reprints this paragraph from Kelly's interview:
...
Nancy showed little interest in defending her husband's behavior, which, she said, was an embarrassment to her and her girls. "When I was going to retire and become director of the Rhoades School, I made him promise to stop gay-bashing in public, because it might upset parents at that private school," she said. She recalled when her husband addressed a group of men about his prostate surgery, he said his rectal procedure was "just not natural, unless maybe you're Barney Frank." Frank dismissed Cunningham's comment. "I wouldn't list stability as his strongest personal characteristic," he said. Frank later added, "He tends to frequently blurt out stuff on gay issues. He seems to be more interested in discussing homosexuality than most homosexuals."
...
Hmm... Then I recalled this earlier piece I'd seen floating on the net.
...
Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights campaign (HRC) has been accused of outing a member of Congress by telling the story of an anti-gay congressman who, eight years ago, privately asked her how people know if they are gay, and stated that he had “loved men”.
At a Gay Pride Forum in Washington, D.C. on June 3, Birch was commenting on reaching out to foes of gay rights. She said that in 1995 she and HRC then-Political Director Daniel Zingale had met with an unnamed conservative Republican congressman, who had been “derisive and demeaning” in his attacks on gay rights legislation.
Birch said that the politician held her and Zingale back after the meeting, and when his staff had left, he asked them, “So how do you know?… You know, how do you know if you’re that way?”
Birch said she offered a description of how people struggle to come to terms with gay identity, and the unnamed congressman said, “Because I’ve loved men.” She said that at the end of the meeting, she told the congressman that she would always protect him. She added that, although he continued to vote against gay rights, “We didn’t forget him. We check in on him.” She said that “there was a moment when we touched each other.”
Birch said that the meeting took place shortly after the congressman had created a controversy in 1995 when he referred to gays as “homos” on the floor of the House of Representatives. The Washington Blade says that media reports and background facts indicate that the congressman was Randall (“Duke”) Cunningham, “an arch-conservative from San Diego”. Cunningham was apparently the only member of the House who called gays “homos” on the House floor at the time....
Hmm... With those comments of Nancy Cunningham that seem to indicate a strong obsession with "homosexuals" on the part of the Dukestir, could she in effect be corrobrating the previously uncorrobrated "outing" of the Dukestir by Elizabeth Burch here?
Mind you, I have nothing against gay folks. I think they deserve so many rights that they are being robbed of now, but the Dukestir now seems to potentially be the worst gay hypocrite since Roy Cohn who was Joseph McCarthy's right hand man back in those days of "the inquisition".
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