Andrew Breitbart is dead at 43.

The fair-and-balanced corporate media is in full swing, calling him a “conservative blogger,” which is true; a “conservative activist…[and] an influential voice in US Republican politics known for his attacks on liberals and Democrats,” which is true; and a “US conservative author and activist known for publishing embarrassing sting videos of left-wing groups,” which is at once true and pathologically deceptive.

For instance:

• In 2010, he posted two videos excerpting a speech by Shirley Sherrod, then Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the USDA, at an NAACP event. The videos were edited together in a way that made it appear Sherrod was saying things she never said or meant, but the result was Sherrod being fired. Once the entire speech was made available, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was compelled to apologize to Sherrod and offer her a new job. Full story »

GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney emerged from an expensive and bruising campaign in Michigan, the state of his birth, with a narrow three percent victory over his current chief rival, Rick Santorum, in the overall vote counts. He tied with Rick Santorum, however, in the delegate count. Michigan is not a winner-take-all primary state. Santorum and Romney each won seven of Michigan’s 14 Congressional districts. So each man gets 14 delegate votes for the convention.

On election night the Detroit Free Press produced an interactive county by county map of the primary results. It shows Romney did well in southeast Michigan, the more densely populated Saginaw Bay area and the tip of the mitt. Santorum scored better on the state’s west side and in less populated areas with strong Christian fundamentalists and in much of the Upper Peninsula. The cult charge against the Mormon Romney likely helped.

CBS political war horse and commentator Bob Schieffer made some insightful comments about Romney’s traction problem on the network’s morning news show Wednesday. Full story »

by Anonymous

The situation is Chardon is all too familiar: a bullied outcast with a troubled home life snaps. If TJ Lane had broken in the usual manner, he might have committed suicide. But TJ snapped differently and took a gun to his tormenters. In an instant, any sympathy for his situation is gone and he’s just a thug, maybe a psycho, and the words “Columbine,” “Goth,” and “Dark Side” start getting thrown around.

Bullying has always been a fact of life in the US–now it’s commercialized and glorified as entertainment. A lot of people turn in to American Idol and other reality shows not for the great performances, but for the truly dreadful ones and the cruelty that follows. The losers tuck their tails between their legs, cry for the camera and their supporters and go home to face down the humiliation.

That’s what the victims of bullying are supposed to do: suck it up.

But victims fall into three categories: the A Victims, those who put up with it until they can get away from it; the B Victims, those who break and turn on themselves; and the C Victims, those who go all Carrie on the world. Full story »

I began my career as an engineer in a large Illinois manufacturing plant. Chuck, the only African-American engineer in the company, was comically paranoid—he rarely spoke above a whisper, refused to say anything over the phone, and before every meeting would check outside his door to see if anyone was lurking in the hallway. When Chuck was passed over for a promotion, he left the company. A year later I heard the head of engineering explain why Chuck had not gotten the job, “Reinhardt (the plant manager) was never going to promote a n…..r.” The moral of the story, obviously enough, is that Chuck’s paranoia was justified.

Gas prices are predicted to go up to $5 in the summer. The timing smells. I may be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean I am wrong.
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The more I watch modern politics (and economics and the culture wars and science “debates”) the more it all reminds me of pro wrestling. You know how it goes. Tough match, back and forth, both the good guy (the “face”) and the bad guy (the “heel”) getting their licks in, and then at the decisive moment either the heel “accidentally” knocks the ref down or his manager distracts the ref or something. While the zebra is looking the other way, the black hat clocks the crowd favorite with a steel chair. Ref turns around. 1…2…3…and we have a new champion! Lather, rinse, repeat.

Which brings us to the breaking story surrounding The Heartland Institute and the revelation of all kinds of incriminating internal documents that, in a nutshell, prove that everything climate scientists have been saying about them is true. Full story »

Thanks to the bungling of the Boulder PD, the Boulder prosecutor’s office and the local and national media we’ll never know who killed JonBenet. But that’s not what we’re talking about today. No, today’s item of business concerns the “sentence” handed down to Douglas Motherfucking Bruce.

Anti-tax crusader Douglas Bruce will have to report to Denver District Court Friday to begin an 180-day jail term followed by six years of strictly supervised economic probation.

Judge Ann Mansfield said today’s sentencing hearing that Bruce’s age, 62, the type of crime he committed and his lack of criminal history outweighed his unruly behavior at trial. Full story »

I was originally going to respond to a thoughtful piece by Jane Briggs-Bunting here at Scholars & Rogues, “Is the media simply racist? Detroit News columnist hits the mark on Bashara murder coverage,” but the more I thought about the matter, the more I disagreed with her conclusion that columnist (actually editorial page editor) Nolan Finley’s piece “Finley: If life’s cheap, murder’s not news” is either poignant or accurate.

Somehow, I missed the sensational headlines about the Bashara murder since it happened, but then again, I don’t generally keep up with national news of local murders for pretty much that very reason…the sensational aspect. Full story »

Crime is a way of life in urban communities, and Detroit is always right up there as one of the baddest of the bads when the FBI releases its annual violent crime statistics.

In the first month of this year, Detroit initially recorded 38 homicides–more than one a day and a sobering statistic.

When a Grosse Pointe Park woman was found strangled in her Mercedes SUV in a Detroit alley on January 25, she was initially listed as one of the 38.

The case became a national and local media sensation since Jane Bashara was white, and Grosse Pointe Park, a suburban enclave, not quite as tony as Grosse Pointe but close, hadn’t had a homicide in more than 20 years. Full story »

The law forbids super PACs — political action committees permitted to raise unlimited funds with little disclosure of donors — from coordinating their activities with those of candidates’ formal campaign committees.

But, it seems, nothing prevents super PACs from coordinating their fundraising activities with each other. And this comes with the blessing of the Democratic fundraiser-in-chief.

From a report by Peter Stone of the Center for Public Integrity comes this tidbit:

Five Democratic super PACs are reaching out to party mega-donors, in a fledgling effort seeking $1 million to $10 million contributions, now that President Barack Obama has blessed the outside spending group working to get him re-elected.

And the reason? Stone reported in January that Democratic super PACs and nonprofits, formed last year, had only raised about $19 million.
Full story »

As if we needed still more evidence that financial authority over national political campaigns is increasingly wielded by fewer and fewer really rich people, consider this exhibit:

Super PACs raised about $181 million in the last two years — with roughly half of it coming from fewer than 200 super-rich people.

That’s the news from a study called “Auctioning Democracy” jointly conducted by Demos, an organization that says it practices “advocacy to influence public debate and catalyze change,” and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Both groups seek to strengthen, if not compel full disclosure and expenditure rules.

Super PACs’ power stemmed from the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 2010 SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission decision. The Court’s Citizen United decision further strengthened corporations’ claim to personhood and weakened the requirement for full disclosure of donations to super PACs.

Politico’s Ken Vogel and Abby Phillip’s analysis of the study noted that

A relatively few wealthy backers are keeping super PACs afloat — and they’re saying so. Last year alone, individuals gave super PACs $63 million.

The news only worsens.
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I can’t tell you how many times this week, in listening to radio, watching TV or reading print “analyses” on the upcoming Super Bowl, I have heard “Bill Belichick” and “Hall of Fame” used in sequence. It’s been a lot. The working assumption is that the Patriots’ head coach, who has been to four Super Bowls and won three of them (pending Sunday’s showdown with the New York Giants) is a lock first-ballot HoFer. After all, he has several rings and is widely regarded as the premier genius of the contemporary game.

Fair enough. But before this particular runaway bandwagon crashes the gates of Canton, I’d like to ask a question: is Belichick really a Hall of Famer?

Let’s consider a few brief facts.

• He cheated. Yes he did. Stone cold busted. (Apologists can argue that what he was doing was no big deal if they like. But as bad as I detest the guy, I respect the hell out of his ability. Full story »

During their 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama and John McCain both claimed the support of the people, citing evidence of small donors who gave to their campaigns. Both used that as a claim to be the true inheritors of the populist mantle.

We were so naive back then about purchasing power financing campaigns. How times have changed despite the continuing fiction of claims by candidates of “popular” support. Our small $201 checks no longer matter. Other people write bigger checks. Corporations can write indescribably large checks.

A report from the Campaign Finance Institute following the 2008 election refuted their claims. Looking at small donors (at least $201), mid-range donors ($201-$999) and large donors ($1,000 and up), the CFI concluded that nearly half of the 450 million donations to President Obama’s campaign committee came from the $1,000-and-up donors.

Both Obama’s and McCain’s campaign made use of bundlers (fundraisers who package checks from other donors), a practice perfected by President George W. Bush. Each raised tens of millions of dollars through the bundled checks of large donors.

Well, presidential candidates are populists no more. Super PACs, organizations freed by the Supreme Court to raise unlimited amounts of money for electioneering communications, have killed that lingering civics-class fantasy.
Full story »

I’m in my second term in the U.S. House of Representatives. I’m a Republocrat. I like the job. It pays $174,000, has great medical benefits, provides a really nice private gym to use, and lots of people have to be nice to me. And there are those $110,000 in taxpayer-funded fringe benefits I get (including plush retirement plans, paid time off, and contributions to Social Security and Medicare taxes). I’ve got a staff to answer the phone and email, run my Twitter and Facebook stuff, and deal with those damned constituents. And I’m in a relatively safe district, thanks to that Republocrat-friendly redistricting bill passed in my state last year. Hey, sometimes people let me use their corporate jets! (Well, as long as I keep quiet about those trips and pay commercial airfare for it.)

Yeah. This is a sweet gig. I want to stay here. In fact, I want to … move up. Be in the leadership. Be a mover and shaker. Now how am I gonna do that beyond kissing the speaker’s ass (and those of his damn deputies, too) and voting however he (or she) tells me to?

It will take money for that Republocrat to ascend higher in the House’s toadying ladder of leadership. Lots of money. And as we know, House members (and senators) have a vehicle to collect and dispense money to other House members — the leadership political action committee. A principal reason for the existence of leadership PACs to is buy friends and influence on Capitol Hill. Apparently, hard work and intelligence are insufficient.
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Joe Paterno is dead. Lots has been written and more will be added to the pile in the coming days and weeks. So let me add my two cents while the thoughts are fresh in my mind.

Had the last few months not happened we’d now be anointing JoePa for sainthood. As you’ve been told so many times before, and are now hearing all over again, he was all that was good and true in collegiate athletics, a man who did things the right way, etc. The thing is, that’s a woefully simplistic commentary on Paterno and how he did business. Also, the last few months did happen. So we now find ourselves needing to address Paterno’s legacy in two parts. Let’s do the ugly bit first. Full story »

New trouble is brewing at Penn State, though the school is operating within the state’s Right to Know law. ABC News has reported that the five current and former Penn State employees enmeshed in the Sandusky abuse scandal are all still on the school’s payroll.

The five are fired football coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier (who remains a tenured faculty member, as does Paterno), assistant coach Mike McQueary (who is on paid leave), former vice president for finance Gary Schultz (who resigned), and former athletic director Tim Curley (who is also on leave). The latter two are facing criminal charges of perjury and failure to report alleged sexual abuse. Penn State is reportedly paying for their legal defense, as well. Full story »

Marc Morano, former environmental communications director to Senator Jim Inhofe and the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, recently published on his Climate Depot website the email address of conservative MIT climate scientist and hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel. As a result, Emanuel was deluged with hate mail that not only threatened his life but also threatened his wife. (MotherJones has the full story.) Other climate scientists and their family members have been threatened with torture, rape, and murder in the past, so it’s likely that similar threats were involved here. Full story »