Amazon.com Widgets

As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Monday, June 05, 2006

Quick Hits

-This is such a fake story:

Speaking to a largely Hispanic audience last Thursday, (Francine) Busby faced a Spanish-speaking questioner who said he wanted to help her campaign but lacked voting papers. The question was translated into English and she responded, "Everybody can help. You can all help. You don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help."

Busby's GOP rival, Brian Bilbray, criticized the Democrat, saying she was encouraging possible illegal immigrants to volunteer for the campaign. On Monday, the GOP launched a radio ad that said, "That's right. Francine Busby says you don't need papers to vote."


The context is that you don't need "papers for voting" to help the campaign. Which is true, I sat next to a 15 year-old who was phone banking last year. Republicans are desperate to come up with some manufactured issue to save this seat, but taking a slip of the tongue out of context is particularly disingenuous. It'll be a nailbiter, at any rate.

-They're turning on their own now: I always hear about Democrats being a circular firing squad. Now Republicans are learning the same technique. With any luck they'll have the same results!

-Another view of the Garcetti v. Ceballos decision handed down by the Supreme Court last week. In my mind, this was clearly a move by the Court to push government whistleblowers into public (like the press) early, where they have arguably less protections, not more. The end result is that, as Jack Balkin said, “Whatever they do, they are pretty much screwed. So the effect of the Court's decision is to create very strong incentives against whistleblowing of any kind.”

-Islamic militias take over in Somalia, defeating the US-backed warlords.

-Using the Web to patrol the border: for the Minuteman who doesn't do well in the heat. The 101st Fighting Keyboardists are now joined by a Border Patrol division!

- Family values: so much so that some Republicans need two families:

Republican Jim Galley, who is running for Congress as a “pro-traditional family” candidate, was married to two women at the same time, defaulted on his child support payments and has been accused of abuse by one of his ex-wives.


Not the first instance of values hypocrisy in the GOP, but perhaps the funniest.

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