POTUS Barack Obama To Tap Pete Rouse As New Chief Of Staff. Check Him Out.

Obama's likely new staff chief was known as '101st senator'
Tom Kizzia

ANCHORAGE — He once helped run state government in Juneau, played shortstop in a local softball league, and voted as an Alaska resident until he moved to a job in the White House two doors down from his close friend, President Barack Obama.

Now it's expected that Pete Rouse will move one office closer to the president when chief of staff Rahm Emanuel resigns to run for mayor of Chicago, and Rouse takes over Emanuel's responibilities.

Before moving to the White House, Rouse had spent 25 years as the consummate Democratic insider in the U.S. Senate, where he played a quiet role as the backdoor connection for Alaska's all-Republican delegation to the other side of the aisle in Congress. He was the longtime chief of staff for Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the one-time Senate majority leader. Starting in 2004, Rouse took on the same job for a promising young freshman senator from Illinois.

Today, as special adviser to Obama, Rouse is in the innermost circle of the West Wing. His office sits between Emanuel's and Obama's senior advisor David Axelrod.

Just one month after Obama took office, Rouse, who is in his mid 60s, described his ascendancy with Obama to the White House as "an interesting ride." "It's only been four years here, this trip from freshman senator," he said.

Rouse has deep family roots in Alaska — his mother, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, grew up in Anchorage starting in World War I, when it was a railroad construction town.

But Rouse himself was born on the East Coast and had never been west of Denver until late 1978 when he flew to Alaska to visit a friend, Alaska's newly elected Republican lieutenant governor, Terry Miller.

Rouse ended up working as Miller's chief of staff for the final four years of Gov. Jay Hammond's administration. It was a great experience, Rouse said, a time when Juneau was filled with young idealists eager to grapple with the state's new oil money, infrastructure need and unformed social policies.

"Juneau at the time was 19,000 people, but it was really a town on the move in terms of young, well-educated people excited by these policy issues," he recalled.

The ambitious young staffer returned to Washington, D.C., in 1983 and went to work for for Democrats in the Senate. For a while, he imagined returning to Alaska if Miller ever managed to win a race for governor. The dream faded; Miller died of bone cancer in 1989, at age 46. Rouse's last visit to Juneau was to attend his old friend's memorial.

Rouse continued to keep many personal ties in Alaska — along with his voter registration. In the 2008 presidential race, records show, the man who would co-lead Obama's transition team voted absentee in Juneau.

There's no record now that he's still registered in the state. In 2008, he could have legally remained on Alaska's voter roles as long as he didn't vote elsewhere and intended to return someday. Voters also are allowed to remain registered in Alaska if they are working somewhere in civil service of the United States — a description that pretty much encapsulates Rouse's career. (He does not show up on Alaska Permanent Fund dividend records.)

The story of Alaska's connection to Obama's inner circle begins in 1915 with the arrival of Goro (George) and Mine Mikami in Seward, where construction of the Alaska Railroad was under way. Three years later the immigrants from Japan moved to Anchorage. Their daughter, Mary, entered school speaking only Japanese and went on to become valedictorian at Anchorage High School. In 1934, Mary graduated with honors from the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines in Fairbanks (the year before it became the University of Alaska), then moved on to Yale, where she earned a Ph.D. and met her husband, Irving Rouse.

(George and Mine Mikami retired and moved to Los Angeles just before World War II, and were sent to a Japanese internment camp in Arizona during the war. A scholarship in their name, endowed by their four children, is given at the university in Fairbanks today.)

Irving and Mary Rouse raised their son, Pete, in Connecticut. He spent a few years working on Capitol Hill for Sen. James Abourezk, D-S.D., answering constituent mail alongside Daschle, another young aide. But when Daschle decided to run for Congress in 1978, Rouse took time off to get a master's degree in public administration at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. There he met Miller, who had recently served as Alaska's youngest-ever Senate president. Miller came home to run for lieutenant governor.

Miller persuaded Rouse to return to his mother's home state to work in Alaska politics. Part of the appeal was that Miller would be heir to Hammond's moderate Republican mantle and had a good shot at becoming governor in four years.

"He was a very intelligent guy and a progressive Republican," Rouse once said of Miller, the only Republican he ever worked for. "On balance I felt he had the right vision for Alaska and the right philosophical approach."

The Alaska years ended, however, when Miller lost the 1982 Republican gubernatorial primary. Rouse headed back to Washington.

As a workaholic senior staffer in the U.S. Senate, Rouse liked to stay quietly in the background. News stories about him during that time invariably noted two things: his affection for cats and his nickname of "The 101st Senator," owing to his reputation for results-oriented strategy and working across party lines.

"One of the things you will find about Pete, he keeps one of the lowest profiles going," said McKie Campbell, a former state Fish and Game Commissioner now working for the Senate Energy Committee in Washington, who stayed friends from the Juneau days. "He's the quiet guy who everybody listens to when he talks."

In 2004 Daschle lost a re-election bid and Rouse got ready to retire. Daschle and other democratic leaders pressed him to stay on and help Obama, who wanted Rouse as his Senate chief of staff.

The Illinois freshman finally persuaded him after saying three things, Rouse recalled: 1, Obama knew he was good at giving speeches but needed help organizing an office; 2, Obama needed a strategy for building respect as a new senator, avoiding the showboat traps; and 3, Rouse could ignore the speculation that he would run for president in 2008.

"There's no way in the world I'm going to do that," the young senator said, according to Rouse.

"So I thought, here's a guy who's important to the future of the Democratic Party, let's help him get set up and pointed in the right direction; how hard can this be?"

Rouse helped prepare the strategy that guided the young senator through his first couple of years, then in 2006 drew up the key memo outlining the pros and cons of running for president.

"Pete's very good at looking around the corners of decisions and playing out the implications of them," Obama told the Washington Post in 2007. "He's been around long enough that he can recognize problems and pitfalls a lot quicker than others can."

Rouse also brought a team of political veterans, many from the Daschle camp, into the Obama campaign.

"When Pete went to work for Barack, what Barack got — and I don't think he realized it — was the only network in Democratic circles that from both a policy and political perspective came close to the Clinton network," political consultant Anita Dunn once told the Post.

Plans for Rouse to help Obama campaign in Alaska ended, however, when Sarah Palin was picked as John McCain's vice presidential candidate; winning the state seemed impossible.

Asked shortly after Obama's inauguration what his role would be in the White House, Rouse responded, "I fix problems," he said, explaining his new role. And if the Republicans take over Congress in November, as some predict, Rouse has friends on the other side.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, now fighting to retain her seat with a write-in campaign after losing the Republican primary to a tea party candidate, once praised him. "Pete's very smart, highly skilled, and has always been totally square in our dealings," she said.


Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/09/30/1458424/obamas-new-chief-of-staff-once.html#ixzz114JBL24m

In Kentucky, Audit Finds Sex Offenders Living In Homes For State Protected Children. Gives Meaning To "The Fox Guarding The Hen House" Analogy.

Read more here.

Where's Jack Conway On This Mortgage Crisis?

JPMorgan halts 50K foreclosures for possible flaws
By JANNA HERRON and ALAN ZIBEL

NEW YORK -- JPMorgan Chase has temporarily stopped foreclosing on more than 50,000 homes so it can review documents that might contain errors.

JPMorgan's move Wednesday makes it the second major company to take such action this month, underscoring a growing legal problem. The issue could stall an already overloaded foreclosure process.

Still, analysts don't expect the delays to reduce the number of foreclosures over the long run.


WASHINGTON — With the overhaul of financial regulation in the bag, the Obama administration Tuesday said it'll focus next on housing finance — another key cause of the recent deep economic downturn — with an eye to deciding the fate of mortgage finance titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The administration said in a statement that it would hold a Conference on the Future of Housing Finance at the Treasury Department on Aug. 17. It'll seek input for legislation to reform the rules governing mortgage finance and the markets for bonds backed by U.S. mortgages.

The Bush administration placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in government conservatorship in September 2008. Uncertainty about what to do with them was ostensibly the reason why most Republicans voted against the recent overhaul of financial regulations.

"It will probably slow things down for a couple months while these documents are reviewed," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. "It won't stop things."

But if the problems turn up at more of the largest mortgage companies, a foreclosure crisis that's already likely to drag on for several more years could persist even longer.

GMAC Mortgage LLC last week halted certain evictions and sales of foreclosed homes in 23 states to review those cases. The company said it found procedural errors in some foreclosure affidavits.

After GMAC's announcement, attorneys general in California and Connecticut told the company to stop foreclosures in their states until it proves it's complying with state law. The Ohio attorney general this week asked judges to review GMAC foreclosure cases. And in Florida, the state attorney general is investigating four law firms, two with ties to GMAC, for allegedly providing fraudulent documents in foreclosure cases.

The issue is also gaining attention on Capitol Hill. Last week, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. and two other lawmakers wrote to Fannie Mae, urging the government-controlled mortgage giant to stop working with so-called "foreclosure mill" law firms under investigation for document fraud.

"Why is Fannie Mae using lawyers that are accused of regularly engaging in fraud to kick people out of their homes?" the lawmakers wrote.

A Fannie Mae spokesman said the company is reviewing the issue.

JPMorgan acknowledged Wednesday that its employees signed some affidavits about loan documents without personally verifying the files. These affidavits verifies the accuracy of the loan information, including who owns the mortgage.

JPMorgan spokesman Kelly said the bank believes the information in the affidavits is accurate, and that the affidavits were prepared by "appropriate personnel."

The bank asked judges not to enter judgments against homeowners facing foreclosure until it completes its review of the problem. JPMorgan expects the process to take a few weeks.

The way mortgages are packaged and sold to many investors as securities can make it hard to determine who has the right to foreclose on a homeowner.

In some states, lenders can foreclose quickly on delinquent mortgage borrowers. But 20 states use a lengthy court process for foreclosures. They require documents to verify information on the mortgage, including who owns it. Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois are the biggest states with this process.

Christopher Immel, a Florida lawyer who represents homeowners, said people who already have lost homes could sue their lender, alleging errors in documents.

In August, a judge in Duval County, Fla., ruled that JPMorgan could not foreclose on two homeowners. The reasoning was that Fannie Mae carried the mortgage on its books and JPMorgan Chase only collected payments on the loan. JPMorgan Chase had identified itself as the owner of the loan.

More lawsuits could come soon.

In May, JPMorgan employee Beth Ann Cottrell said in a deposition that she and her staff of eight signed about 18,000 legal documents a month without reviewing every file. In a similar testimony, GMAC employee Jeffrey Stephan said he signed 10,000 documents a month without personally verifying the mortgage information.

"It's very realistic to believe that this is a standard practice in how they go about foreclosures in certain states," said Immel, whose law firm took Cottrell's and Stephan's depositions.

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/09/29/1456600/jpmorgan-suspends-certain-foreclosures.html#ixzz111Hf4Nkr

Editor's note:

GMAC Mortgage LLC said Monday it halted certain evictions and sales of foreclosed homes as it corrects "a potential issue" in its foreclosure process.

The action highlights what is becoming a larger problem for lenders and servicers that may have illegally driven homeowners out of their houses. The issue is threatening to clog up an already overloaded foreclosure process.

Lenders took back more homes in August than in any month since the start of the U.S. mortgage crisis, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said last week. Banks have been stepping up repossessions to clear out their backlog of bad loans.

California's attorney general wants GMAC Mortgage LLC to stop foreclosures in the state until it proves it is complying with a state law aimed at preventing foreclosures.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said Friday that he directed Ally Financial Inc., which owns GMAC, to prove it is complying with a law that prohibits lenders from taking steps to foreclose a home before making an effort to work with the borrower.

The state law covers mortgages made between Jan. 1, 2003, and Dec. 31, 2007. It requires lenders to attempt to contact a borrower to determine if they're eligible for a loan modification before issuing a notice of default on the mortgage, the first step in the foreclosure process.

Prices for homes either in foreclosure or sold by banks rose in the second quarter, according to a real estate group, underscoring competition in the market for distressed properties and the degree to which the mortgage crisis has spread to more affluent neighborhoods.

In the second quarter, 248,534 U.S. properties were sold by banks or by owners who had fallen into foreclosure, RealtyTrac of Irvine said. That was an increase of 4.9 percent from the previous quarter, but a 20.1 percent decline from the same quarter last year, when discounted bank-owned homes flooded the market.

The average price for these properties was $174,198, RealtyTrac said, up 1.6 percent from the previous quarter and 6.1 percent from the same quarter last year.

The Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief effort is failing to ease the foreclosure crisis as more than half of those who have enrolled have fallen out of the program.

As of August, approximately 680,000 homeowners who applied to get their mortgage payments lowered, or about 51 percent, have been disqualified, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. That's up from about 48 percent in July.

The report gives ammunition to critics who say the program has failed to slow the tide of foreclosures. They say it's better to let troubled homeowners lose their homes and home prices fall.

CATO Institute Releases "Fiscal Policy Report Card On America's Governors: 2010". See How Your Governor Manages Your Money.

Read more here, or excerpts below.

State governments have had to make tough budget choices in recent years. Tax revenues have stagnated as a result of the poor economy, and that has prompted governors to take a variety of fiscal actions to close large budget gaps. Some governors have cut spending to balance their budgets, while others have pursued large tax increases.

That is the backdrop to this 10th biennial fiscal report card of the governors, which examines state budget actions since 2008. It uses statistical data to grade the governors on their taxing and spending records — governors who have cut taxes and spending the most receive the highest grades, while those who have increased taxes and spending the most receive the lowest grades.

Four governors were awarded an "A" in this report card — Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Seven governors were awarded an "F" — Ted Kulongoski of Oregon, David Paterson of New York, Jodi Rell of Connecticut, Pat Quinn of Illinois, Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, Bill Ritter of Colorado, and Chris Gregoire of Washington.

Click here to check out how your Governor stacks up to others.

Tea Party's Roots Lie In Backlash Against Obama.

Tea Party's roots lie in backlash against Obama
By Will Bunch

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- The first time I saw Christine O'Donnell in action, there were no bright TV lights and no talk of "dabbling in witchcraft" or her offbeat views on masturbation.

It was the regular meeting of the rural Sussex County chapter of the Delaware 9-12 Patriots back in November 2009, and O'Donnell -- a long-shot possible U.S. Senate candidate still months away from becoming a nightly cable news sensation -- wasn't what brought 100 souls out to the Bowers Beach firehouse on a foggy Wednesday night.

They listened politely to O'Donnell's 20-minute spiel that touched on issues like health care reform, but really they'd come out on behalf of their muse -- "Morning-Zoo"-jock-turned-political-avatar Glenn Beck -- to express their anger and unease over the rise of President Barack Obama and their contempt for politicians who might dare go along with Obama's agenda, such as moderate GOP Rep. Mike Castle, the man O'Donnell would knock out in a nationally watched primary earlier this month.

Before their meeting, I sat down in a diner with three leaders of the Delaware 9-12 Patriots and over heaping plates of pasta or meatloaf, I asked them how they came to form their group, the state's largest among what many now call the Tea Party movement.

Real-estate agent Theresa Garcia told me of how candidate Obama made her "uncomfortable" the first time she watched him on TV, while her husband, Alex, tried to convince me that the overwhelming win in Delaware in 2008 by Obama and native son Joe Biden wasn't legitimate because their majority came from "the handout people" in Wilmington.

The leader of the 9-12 Patriots, retired trucker and Vietnam vet Russ Murphy, said he'd been energized by reports on Fox News playing up Obama's contacts with '60s radical William Ayers and told me that Obama was "fundamentally not American," questioning his credentials to serve as commander-in-chief.

The increasing federal debt and the growth of big government? That issue barely came up.

In reporting my new book about the rise of the anti-Obama backlash movement, I spent a year traveling from Arizona to Georgia to Massachusetts asking the same questions that many Americans are just now asking themselves in the wake of O'Donnell's upset win in Delaware and other political muscle-flexing from the far right: Who exactly are these Tea Partiers, and what do they want?

Movement leaders and some friendly political pundits insist that this conservative uprising is nothing more complex than a spontaneous combustion of anger -- sizable, independent and focused solely on the size and scope of the federal government and on doing something about the growing national debt.

But that was not the Tea Party that I found as I ventured to places like the gunpowder-tinged Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot in Kentucky, where vendors openly sold Photoshopped pictures of Obama getting a back rub from Adolf Hitler and attendees insisted the president would confiscate their weapons, to a swank Nashville, Tennessee, ballroom where Sarah Palin netted a cool $100,000 from the masses of Tea Party Nation, pledging she would give it back to the cause.

Indeed, people miss the entire point about the backlash when they try to define it strictly through a political prism. At the end of the day, the Tea Party movement is mainly rooted in a cultural revolution, whipped by winds of anxiety and fear -- not just about the loss of so many middle-class jobs in America, but also about sweeping demographic and cultural change in America.

The roots of rage on right-wing talk radio came before Obama's election -- with angry rhetoric about undocumented immigration, fueled by experts reporting that whites would be a minority in America by the middle of the 21st century. The arrival of the first nonwhite president in 2008 in the person of Obama was like a lightning bolt, creating not only the "uncomfortable" feelings of future Tea Party joiners like Garcia but also inspiring theories that the new president is not an American citizen or is a secret Muslim.

Today, these ideas remain embedded in the DNA of the Tea Party, with polls showing nearly 60 percent of adherents say they don't think Obama was born in the United States or responded with no answer or "don't know."

While the initial protests targeting government spending did spring up just weeks after Obama signed the $800 billion economic stimulus bill, there's scant evidence of many future Tea Party protesters taking to the barricades in fall 2008 over the $700 billion Wall Street and bank bailout, a massive spending program launched by Republican George W. Bush.

Nor did they protest the billions in debt wracked up during the Bush years for two wars, a tax cut tilted toward millionaires and billionaires and a pricey Medicare drug program. That suggests the Tea Party is less about preventing big government than about preventing government by Barack Obama.

To the extent that the Tea Party has an agenda, it is a top-down affair, hatched largely in the studios of Beck and Rush Limbaugh -- figures who unite and animate their culture much as the Beatles and Dylan uplifted the 1960s counterculture. Money from billionaires like Charles and David Koch of oil-rich Koch Industries with a pro-business -- and anti-populist -- agenda helps to provide an infrastructure for their protests.

The result is a unified movement that is indeed wielding enormous influence on the U.S. body politic, as the Tea Party movement -- supported by no more than 25 percent of Americans, according to most polls, has all but pulled off a leveraged buyout of the Republican Party.

The GOP's new "Pledge to America," is not only a sop to the anti-Obama backlash -- especially in fiery language that speaks of "an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites" -- but embraces its political contradictions -- repeatedly criticizing the federal debt while increasing it by $700 billion to fund tax cuts for billionaires like the Koch brothers -- a prime example of financial interests hijacking this cultural rage.

This comes on the heels of the movement's success in pushing one-time Senate dealmakers like John McCain and Lindsey Graham to the far right and scuttling any hopes of immigration or energy reform.

The dissonance of the Pledge to America went unheard by the Tea Party. Ten months after that first encounter in a Delaware fire hall, I found myself in the same place as O'Donnell, Beck, Palin and 100,000 diehards from the anti-Obama backlash, at Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

There was no talk of the jobs crisis facing America or governmental solutions, but the throng embraced the TV star's message that the poor in America don't have it so bad and that the rally "[has] nothing to do with politics, everything to do with God." That wasn't far off. This was indeed a quasi-religious Woodstock moment for a movement that is reshaping American politics -- even as it's really about preserving a culture instead.

Editor's note: Will Bunch is author of "The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama," to be published by HarperCollins on Tuesday, and of "Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future." He is senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and writer of its Attytood blog, and a senior fellow for Media Matters for America, a progressive research center monitoring the media.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: The Tea Kettle Movement.

The Tea Kettle Movement
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There are actually two Tea Party movements in America today: one you’ve read about that is not that important and one you’ve not read about that could become really important if the right politician understood how to tap into it.

The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I’d actually call the “Tea Kettle movement” — because all it’s doing is letting off steam.

That is not to say that the energy behind it is not authentic (it clearly is) or that it won’t be electorally impactful (it clearly might be). But affecting elections and affecting America’s future are two different things. Based on all I’ve heard from this movement, it feels to me like it’s all steam and no engine. It has no plan to restore America to greatness.

The Tea Kettle movement can’t have a positive impact on the country because it has both misdiagnosed America’s main problem and hasn’t even offered a credible solution for the problem it has identified. How can you take a movement seriously that says it wants to cut government spending by billions of dollars but won’t identify the specific defense programs, Social Security, Medicare or other services it’s ready to cut — let alone explain how this will make us more competitive and grow the economy?

And how can you take seriously a movement that sat largely silent while the Bush administration launched two wars and a new entitlement, Medicare prescription drugs — while cutting taxes — but is now, suddenly, mad as hell about the deficit and won’t take it anymore from President Obama? Say what? Where were you folks for eight years?

The issues that upset the Tea Kettle movement — debt and bloated government — are actually symptoms of our real problem, not causes. They are symptoms of a country in a state of incremental decline and losing its competitive edge, because our politics has become just another form of sports entertainment, our Congress a forum for legalized bribery and our main lawmaking institutions divided by toxic partisanship to the point of paralysis.

The important Tea Party movement, which stretches from centrist Republicans to independents right through to centrist Democrats, understands this at a gut level and is looking for a leader with three characteristics. First, a patriot: a leader who is more interested in fighting for his country than his party. Second, a leader who persuades Americans that he or she actually has a plan not just to cut taxes or pump stimulus, but to do something much larger — to make America successful, thriving and respected again. And third, someone with the ability to lead in the face of uncertainty and not simply whine about how tough things are — a leader who believes his job is not to read the polls but to change the polls.

Democratic Pollster Stan Greenberg told me that when he does focus groups today this is what he hears: “People think the country is in trouble and that countries like China have a strategy for success and we don’t. They will follow someone who convinces them that they have a plan to make America great again. That is what they want to hear. It cuts across Republicans and Democrats.”

To me, that is a plan that starts by asking: what is America’s core competency and strategic advantage, and how do we nurture it? Answer: It is our ability to attract, develop and unleash creative talent. That means men and women who invent, build and sell more goods and services that make people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, secure and entertained than any other country.

Leadership today is about how the U.S. government attracts and educates more of that talent and then enacts the laws, regulations and budgets that empower that talent to take its products and services to scale, sell them around the world — and create good jobs here in the process. Without that, we can’t afford the health care or defense we need.

This is the plan the real Tea Party wants from its president. To implement it would require us to actually raise some taxes — on, say, gasoline — and cut others — like payroll taxes and corporate taxes. It would require us to overhaul our immigration laws so we can better control our borders, let in more knowledge workers and retain those skilled foreigners going to college here. And it would require us to reduce some services — like Social Security — while expanding others, like education and research for a 21st-century economy.

In other words, it will require a very smart, subtle and focused plan to use our now diminishing resources in the most efficient way possible to get back to our core competency. That is the only long-term solution to our problem — to grow our way out of debt with American workers who are more empowered and educated to compete.

Any Tea Party that says the simple answer is just shrinking government and slashing taxes might be able to tip the midterm elections in its direction. But it can’t tip America in the right direction. There is a Tea Party for that, but it’s still waiting for a leader.

Joel Pett Is Still On A Roll. LMAO!

In New York, GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Carl Paladino Comes "unglued", Threatens New York Post Editor. Watch Video.

"I'll take you out, buddy" -- Mafia style. (wink).

Despite Denials, Is Jim DeMint "gunning" For Mitch McConnell?

McConnell's leadership might be at risk
Does DeMint have his eye on top Senate GOP post?
By James Rosen

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim DeMint, in an unusual assertion of unilateral power, warned the other 99 senators that for the rest of their legislative session this year, all bills and nominations that are slated for unanimous passage must go through his office for review.

The move by the South Carolina Republican, who has a growing national following among conservative activists, is his most direct challenge yet to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and it's increased speculation that he's gunning for the Kentucky Republican's leadership post.

DeMint has repeatedly denied that he wants to challenge McConnell as Senate Republican leader. However, DeMint has backed numerous conservative outsiders in primaries who've toppled candidates preferred by the Republican establishment.

DeMint defended his action.

"I'm doing the job South Carolinians elected me to do, which is to review each bill carefully before it is passed, not after," DeMint told McClatchy. "Only in Washington is it a radical idea to read a bill and know how much it costs before we agree to pass it. I'm not going to sit by quietly while big spenders try to secretly ram through bills that increase the debt and expand the size of government."

DeMint's aides said he's not out to block all legislation and is focused on spending measures.

They noted that DeMint backs a major authorization bill for the U.S. Coast Guard and President Barack Obama's nomination of Gen. Jim Amos to be the Marine Corps commandant, both of which are headed for unanimous passage.

McConnell's aides said Tuesday that they take DeMint at his word.

"It is the right of any senator to object to any bill that he has not seen," said Don Stewart, McConnell's spokesman.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, facing a tough re-election fight in Nevada, gleefully highlighted DeMint's new power play.

"I wonder what Minority Leader McConnell thinks about self-proclaimed King DeMint's unilateral declaration," said Jim Manley, Reid's chief spokesman. "One thing I know for sure is if their (Republican) conference continues to follow the lead of the junior senator from South Carolina, they are destined to be in the minority for years to come."

With many Americans angry over increased government spending and the still-stagnant economy, Republicans are widely considered to have a strong chance to regain control of the House of Representatives in November, with an outside shot at winning a Senate majority.

What makes DeMint's move a challenge to McConnell is that under a long-standing bipartisan Senate accord, the majority and minority leaders must agree to every measure or nomination that goes to the chamber for passage by unanimous consent.

However, the South Carolina senator's new muscle-flexing raises the stakes because it strikes at the heart of a core Senate process that so far has survived the bitter partisan rancor between Democrats and Republicans.

Under the "hotline" or unanimous consent process, which has been used for years, the Senate majority and minority leaders move ostensibly noncontroversial bills and nominations to quick passage.

DeMint and some other senators think that process has been abused increasingly, with important measures such as spending bills "hotlined" to avoid politically difficult roll call votes.

Senators are supposed to be notified in advance of all bills or nominations to be moved via unanimous consent, with objection from even one senator enough to stop an item.

However, Wesley Denton, DeMint's spokesman, said Senate leadership aides often leave phone messages about such bills late in the day, after staffers have gone home, and then presume that non-responses to the messages constitute agreement.

Sens. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, and Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, are crafting legislation to update the hotline process by requiring that all measures be posted online at least 72 hours before Senate votes, whether unanimous or roll call.

Denton said DeMint supports the McCaskill-Coburn reform bill, and that the South Carolina senator would be satisfied with 48 hours' notice of measures headed for votes.


Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/09/28/1455090/does-demint-have-his-eye-on-top.html#ixzz10vZW1ppO

Is Atlanta's Bishop Eddie Long A "Predatory Monster" Or "David Facing Goliath"? You Be The Judge.

Eugene Robinson: Homophobic Hypocrisy.

Homophobic hypocrisyg
By Eugene Robinson

WASHINGTON — One of the small ironies of the Bishop Eddie Long scandal is the preacher's self-pitying complaint, in a Sunday sermon vetted by his lawyers, that he feels “like David against Goliath.”

Really? Let's see, on one side we have one of the most prominent and influential clerics in the country, the pastor of a suburban Atlanta megachurch that claims 25,000 members. On the other, we have four young men who claim in lawsuits that Long abused his clerical authority to lure and coerce them into having sex with him. Unlike the bishop, as far as I know, none of the accusers is driven around in a Bentley. Or is constantly attended by a retinue of aides and bodyguards. Or cultivates and maintains first-name relationships with famous politicians, athletes and entertainers.

I'm pretty sure the preacher has that whole David-Goliath thing backward.

A much bigger irony, of course, is that Long has been a vehement crusader against same-sex marriage — and against homosexuality in general. And the biggest irony of all is that his very public travails may force the African-American church to finally confront its long history of homophobic hypocrisy.

Starting in 1987 with just 300 members, Long built the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church into one of the nation's two or three biggest and most important black congregations. The 240-acre church complex is located in DeKalb County, one of the wealthiest majority-black jurisdictions in the country. The church is popular among Atlanta's black celebrities, and its success has made Long a celebrity, too.

In 2004, Long led a march to Martin Luther King Jr.'s gravesite in support of a Georgia constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Two years later, when it was decided that Coretta Scott King's funeral would be held at New Birth — the Kings' daughter Bernice is one of the ministers there — veteran civil rights activist Julian Bond was outraged. “I knew her attitude toward gay and lesbian rights,” he said of Coretta King. “I just couldn't imagine that she'd want to be in that church with a minister who was a raving homophobe.”

The black church in America has long mixed political activism with a deep social conservatism. But although polls show that the nation has become much more understanding and tolerant of homosexuality, the black church has been painfully slow to change. I wrote a column several years ago suggesting that black preachers come down from the pulpit and get to know their parishioners — and I still think that would be a good start.

“This is probably the most difficult time in my entire life,” Long said in his sermon Sunday. “There have been allegations and attacks made on me. I have never in my life portrayed myself as a perfect man. But I am not the man that's being portrayed on television. That's not me. That is not me.”

Then who is Eddie Long? The upstanding father of four who came to the pulpit hand-in-hand with his wife and denounced — but did not deny — the allegations against him? Or the manipulative sexual con artist who, according to his four accusers, does not remotely practice what he preaches?

The four men, in their civil lawsuits, tell remarkably similar stories. They say that Long took a special interest in some of the young men who attended his church in Atlanta and a satellite church in Charlotte, N.C. They say he took them separately on trips to such destinations as Kenya, South Africa and New Zealand when they were teenagers — but above the age of consent in Georgia, which is 16.

The men say that Long bought them lavish gifts, including cars and jewelry, and led them gradually into sexual activity, citing biblical passages as justification. One of the men says that Long performed a religious “covenant” ceremony with him that sounds strikingly like an exchange of marriage vows.

I'm guessing that maybe Long has some questions of identity to grapple with. He might choose to seek and confront the answers, or he might not. But meanwhile, African-American preachers and worshipers across the nation are watching — and, one hopes, learning.

“That is not me,” Long said. But what if it is?

Nothing he learns about himself can negate all the good works he has done in his ministry — all the people whose lives he has changed with a message of faith and hope. Maybe he could forgive himself. Then maybe he could forgive all the gays and lesbians he so coldly condemns.

Eugene Robinson is a Washington Post columnist. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Cal Thomas: Republicans' 'Pledge' Reaffirms The Founders' Goals.

Republicans' 'Pledge' reaffirms the Founders' goals
By Cal Thomas

All public policy is founded on an underlying philosophy about humanity and the world. Some call it a “worldview,” but whatever it is called, everything government does (or does not do) derives from a philosophical foundation on which it is constructed.

While the usual suspects have criticized the Republicans' “A Pledge to America” document, I find it a refreshing reminder of the founding philosophy that “brought forth on this continent a new nation,” in Abraham Lincoln's words, 234 years ago.

The Republicans might have chosen a word other than “pledge.” They could have selected “promise” (a declaration that something will or will not be done), or “covenant” (an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified), or even “assurance” (a positive declaration intended to give confidence), but they chose “pledge” (a solemn promise or agreement to do or refrain from doing something). Pledge is best, because “solemn” is the most serious of words.

Not to nitpick, but something is missing from the document. The pledge speaks of what Republicans will and won't do should they regain power and how they will cut this and repeal that, but what about us: the unelected who voted them into office? What's our role?

The pledge speaks of having a “responsible, fact-based conversation with the American people about the scale of the fiscal challenges we face, and the urgent action that is required to deal with them.” OK, but will this be a one-way conversation, or will we be told what is expected of us? If the people are to have a minimal role in the restructuring of government, if this is just an anti-government agenda, the pledge will not work.

The first sentence of that conversation should be “we can't go on like this.” Too many Americans have been riding the gravy train called “entitlement” for too long, and it is about to derail. Republicans should make weaning them from dependence on government a patriotic duty and the essence of liberty. Focus on those who have overcome poverty, and let them serve as examples of what others can do.

Let's talk about individuals demonstrating more responsibility for their lives and ensuring their own retirement, with Social Security returning to the insurance program it was originally designed to be: a safety net, not a hammock. Get serious about reforming Social Security and Medicare so that younger workers can save and invest their own money and have it with interest and dividends when they need it. Older workers and retirees would continue on the current system.

Specifics on reforming Social Security and Medicare were left out of the pledge because Republicans know Democrats aren't serious about taming these twin monsters. Democrats would rather use these issues to demonize the GOP than offer practical solutions to amend them.

Since the New Deal, there has been an unhealthy relationship between government and the people that has harmed both. But like illegal drugs, there would be little supply if the demand were not high. The idea that people are incapable of taking care of themselves and their immediate families would have been foreign to our Founding Fathers. What too many lack is not resources, but motivation. Remind politicians of the stories from our past and present about people who overcame obstacles, and start teaching these stories to the kids in our schools.

Perhaps no one in modern times articulated the conservative philosophy about government and its rightful place better than Ronald Reagan, who said in a 1964 speech endorsing GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater: “This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Philosophy is easier to express than to apply. Republicans, should they win back Congress this year and the White House in 2012, will face enormous opposition from entrenched interests that will test more than the strength of their philosophy. It will test the strength of their character.

Cal Thomas is a columnist with Tribune Media Services. His e-mail address is tmseditors@tribune.com.

Louisville Courier Journal Tags GOP's "Pledge To America" "Vapid". But The Newspaper's Call For More Stimulus Spending Deserves The Tag Instead.

A vapid pledge

In their “Pledge to America,” House Republicans make sweeping promises about simultaneously reducing taxes, slashing spending and bringing the deficit under control.

If that sounds too good to be true, it's because it is. The full cost of the pledge's proposal to extend all of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts would be $3.7 trillion over the next 10 years. That's not a misprint. And, it includes the much debated $700 billion in tax cuts that the GOP adamantly insists be granted the richest 2 percent of the population. That is money for which there is no meaningful public return — the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed 11 possible steps to give the economy a boost and rated tax cuts for the wealthy last.

Meanwhile, the pledge puts most federal spending — Social Security, Medicare and defense spending — off limits, yet promises to save $100 billion in the first year alone. The Republicans don't say how precisely, and the few ideas they do float wouldn't begin to make a big difference.. What else would they suggest? Reductions in food inspections? Gutting workplace safety programs? Slashing education aid, closing national parks, halting efforts to rebuild a crumbling national infrastructure?

At the heart of the Republicans' strategy is a hope that the pledge will appeal to tea party activists who believe that federal stimulus spending and bailouts of the banking, credit and auto industries have brought the country to the brink of fiscal ruin. That is a popular notion, given public impatience with the slow economic recovery and stubbornly high unemployment, but it is also an uninformed and misled stance.

A cautious CBO study found that unemployment would be 0.7 percent to 1.8 percent higher — between 1.4 million and 3.3 million fewer jobs — without the stimulus bill passed at the beginning of the Obama administration. Other studies have found even more dramatic benefits. An assessment by Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics, and Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, concluded in August that the unemployment rate would have been 11 percent (it was 9.5 percent at the time) without the stimulus and 16.5 percent if neither the stimulus nor the banks' bailout had been passed. Neither, incidentally, is a liberal activist, and Mr. Zandi was a backer of Sen. John McCain in 2008.

The authors of the Republicans' pledge overlook that at the time of passage of the stimulus, the housing and credit industries were in free-fall and the nation's rapidly contracting economy was hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs each month.

Not everything that has been tried worked. Moreover, the stimulus arguably was too small; a good case could be made for additional government spending, not less. But at the time the Democrats took action, the Republicans, under whose watch a sound economy had disintegrated into calamity, didn't have better ideas.

That hasn't changed.

Joel Pett Takes On The GOP's Pledge To America. LMAO!

MAUREEN DOWD: Slouching Toward Washington.

Slouching Toward Washington
By MAUREEN DOWD

Holy Roddy McDowall.

Christine O’Donnell doesn’t understand why monkeys can’t turn into people right before her eyes.

Bill Maher continued his video torment of O’Donnell by releasing another old clip of her on his HBO show on Friday night, this time showing one in which she argued that “Evolution is a myth.”

Maher shot back, “Have you ever looked at a monkey?” To which O’Donnell rebutted, “Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

The comedian has a soft spot for the sweet-faced Republican Senate candidate from Delaware, but as he told me on Friday, it’s “powerful stupid to think primate evolution could happen fast enough to observe it. That’s bacteria.

“I find it so much more damaging than the witch stuff because she could be in a position to make decisions about scientific issues, like global warming and stem cells, and she thinks primate evolution can happen in a week and mice have human brains.”

In the Republican primary, O’Donnell beat Congressman Mike Castle, who had the temerity to support stem-cell research and acknowledge global warming. O’Donnell’s numbers are dropping, while Castle is still beating the Democratic candidate, Chris Coons, by almost 20 points in a theoretical matchup.

In 2007, O’Donnell frantically warned Bill O’Reilly, “American scientific companies are crossbreeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.”

The field of human-animal experiments is dubbed “chimera” research, named for the she-monster in Greek mythology that has a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail.

Dr. Irving Weissman, director of Stanford’s Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, did the first experiments injecting human brain-forming stem cells into the brains of immune-deficient mice 10 years ago.

He assured me that the mice did not suddenly start acting human. “There were no requests for coffee from Minnie,” he said. “The total number of human brain cells in the mouse brain was less than one in a thousand. I don’t think we would get a mouse with a full human brain. And even if the mouse made it to a human mouse it would still have a mouse-brain offspring.”

Dr. Weissman is sensitive to ethical questions and has tried to ensure that “the nightmare scenario” won’t happen: putting embryonic stem cells into mice at the earliest stages, which could give rise to every tissue in the body including human sperm and eggs, which could lead to two mice mating and the early formation of human fetuses in the body of a mouse.

He is working toward breakthroughs on multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries, strokes, breast cancer and a host of other diseases, and is worried by the retrogressive attitude about science and medicine among the new crop of Tea Partiers.

Sarah Palin will believe global warming is a hoax until she’s doing aerial hunting of wolves underwater. And in a 2009 clip, Sharron Angle, the Republican Senate candidate from Nevada, suggested that autism — a word she uttered with air quotes — is a phony rubric. She suggested that people are taking advantage of such maladies to get extra health benefits, adding that she doesn’t see why she should have to subsidize maternity benefits for other people either, especially since, as she said, she’s not having any more babies.

Dr. Weissman said, “The question they should be asked is, if it were their child or wife or selves or parents and there was this whole list of diseases treated by stem cells, would they deny these therapies?”

Maybe the problem is not so much chimeras in science as chimeras in politics.

We seem beset with spellbinding hybrids with the looks of Fox News anchors, the brains of mice and the power of changing the direction of the country.

President Obama was supposed to be a giant leap forward in modernity, the brainy, rational first black president leading us out of the scientific darkness of the W. years. But by letting nutters get a foothold, he may usher us into the past.

Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Jim DeMint and some Tea Party types don’t merely yearn for the country they idealize from the 1950s. They want to go back to the 1750s.

Joe Miller, the Palin-blessed Republican nominee for Senate in Alaska, suggests that Social Security is unconstitutional because it wasn’t in the Constitution. The Constitution is a dazzling document, but do these originalists really think things haven’t changed since then? If James Madison beamed down now, he would no doubt be stunned at the idea that America had evolved so far but was hemming itself in by the strictest interpretation of his handiwork. He might even tweet about it.

Evolution is no myth, but we may be evolving backward. Christine O’Donnell had better hope they don’t bring back witch burning.

Cal Thomas: If GOP Takes Back Control, It Should Realize Its ‘Pledge’ Is Easier To Express Than To Apply.

The GOP philosophy
If GOP takes back control, it should realize its ‘pledge’ is easier to express than to apply
By CAL THOMAS

All public policy is founded on an underlying philosophy about humanity and the world. Some call it a “worldview,” but whatever it is called, everything government does (or does not do) derives from a philosophical foundation on which it is constructed.

While the usual suspects have criticized the Republicans’ “A Pledge to America” document, I find it a refreshing reminder of the founding philosophy that “brought forth on this continent a new nation,” in Lincoln’s words, 234 years ago.

The Republicans might have chosen a word other than “pledge.” They could have selected “promise” (a declaration that something will or will not be done), or “covenant” (an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified), or even “assurance” (a positive declaration intended to give confidence), but they chose “pledge” (a solemn promise or agreement to do or refrain from doing something). Pledge is best, because “solemn” is the most serious of words.

Not to nitpick, but something is missing from the document. The pledge speaks of what Republicans will and won’t do should they regain power and how they will cut this and repeal that, but what about us: the unelected who voted them into office? What’s our role?

The pledge speaks of having a “responsible, fact-based conversation with the American people about the scale of the fiscal challenges we face, and the urgent action that is required to deal with them.” OK, but will this be a one-way conversation, or will we be told what is expected of us? If the people are to have a minimal role in the restructuring of government, if this is just an anti-government agenda, the pledge will not work.

The first sentence of that conversation should be “we can’t go on like this.” Too many Americans have been riding the gravy train called “entitlement” for too long and it is about to derail. Republicans should make weaning them from dependence on government a patriotic duty and the essence of liberty. Focus on those who have overcome poverty and let them serve as examples of what others can do.

Let’s talk about individuals demonstrating more responsibility for their lives and ensuring their own retirement, with Social Security returning to the insurance program it was originally designed to be: a safety net, not a hammock. Get serious about reforming Social Security and Medicare so that younger workers can save and invest their own money and have it with interest and dividends when they need it. Older workers and retirees would continue on the current system.

Specifics on reforming Social Security and Medicare were left out of the pledge because Republicans know Democrats aren’t serious about taming these twin monsters. Democrats would rather use these issues to demonize the GOP than offer practical solutions to amend them.

Since the New Deal, there has been an unhealthy relationship between government and the people that has harmed both. But like illegal drugs, there would be little supply if the demand were not high. The idea that people are incapable of taking care of themselves and their immediate families would have been foreign to our Founding Fathers. What too many lack is not resources, but motivation. Remind politicians of the stories from our past and present about people who overcame obstacles, start teaching these stories to the kids in our schools.

Perhaps no one in modern times articulated the conservative philosophy about government and its rightful place better than Ronald Reagan, who said in a 1964 speech endorsing GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater: “This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Philosophy is easier to express than to apply. Republicans, should they win back Congress this year and the White House in 2012, will face enormous opposition from entrenched interests that will test more than the strength of their philosophy. It will test the strength of their character.

Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens To Be Buried At Arlington National Cemetary With Military Honors. Anyone Know What The Criteria Is For Such Burials?

Sen. Ted Stevens to be buried at Arlington
By Erika Bolstad

WASHINGTON — Former Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska will be buried today in Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery, in a ceremony that is expected to bring many of his former colleagues in the Senate to his graveside.

Stephens died Aug. 9 at age 86 in a plane crash in Alaska. Four others perished in the crash.

The former World War II pilot will be buried with military honors and some of the Senate's morning business is being taken up in tribute to Stevens, the longest serving Republican senator in U.S. history.

"Ted was a legend in his own lifetime," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday morning. "He lived an incredibly full life. Most of it in service to his nation, and more specifically, to his state. His colleagues in the Senate admired and even sometimes feared him. But Alaskans loved him without any qualification. To them he was just Uncle Ted, a title that I'm sure will live on."

He devoted his entire adult life to a central mission, McConnell said: working "tirelessly and unapologetically to transform Alaska into a modern state. He was faithful to that mission to the very end."

Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Penn., spoke of Stevens' legendary temper, and the Hulk tie he would don when he faced a tough fight in the Senate.

"Behind that tough exterior there was a heart of gold, and very emotional man," Specter said. "He didn't lose his temper, he always knew where it was."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has proposed legislation to name a mountain and part of an ice field in Denali National Park and Preserve for the late Sen. Ted Stevens. The proposed Stevens Peak is commonly known as South Hunter Peak but is the tallest unnamed mountain in Alaska. Murkowski also has proposed naming the northern portion of the Chugach ice field the Ted Stevens Ice Field.


Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/09/28/1454293/sen-ted-stevens-to-be-buried-at.html#ixzz10qBvlI4i

Update: I found the answer to my question:

Go here to find the answer.

Next Monday, October 4, Is Deadline To Register To Vote In Kentucky's General Election.

COMMONWEALTHOF KENTUCKY
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OFSTATE
TREY GRAYSON

NEWS RELEASE

RE: Kentuckians Face Deadline to Register to Vote in General Election
DATE: September 27, 2010
CONTACT: Les Fugate, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
Office of the Secretary of State
Office: (502) 564-3490
Cell: (502) 229-3803
Les.Fugate@ky.gov

(Frankfort, KY) If Kentuckians want to participate in the upcoming general election on November 2, 2010, they have one week to make sure they are registered to vote, Kentucky’s chief election official, Secretary of State Trey Grayson announced today.

Kentuckians only have a few more days to sign up before registration books close. The deadline to register is Monday, October 4th. County Clerks’ offices throughout Kentucky will accept voter registration cards until the close of business that day. A postmark of October 4 is also required for all mail-in voter registration applications. Registration cards can be obtained over the internet at www.vote.ky.gov/register.

“I encourage all citizens who have not already done so, to register to vote today,” stated Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. “We hope to see everyone exercising their constitutional right to vote on November 2, 2010.”

To be a registered voter in Kentucky, you must: be a U.S. citizen, be a resident of Kentucky, be at least 18 years of age on or before November 2nd, not be a convicted felon, or if you have been convicted of a felony, your civil rights must have been restored by executive pardon, have not been judged “mentally incompetent” in a court of law and have your voting rights removed, and not claim the right to vote anywhere outside Kentucky.

Additionally, Secretary Grayson reminded voters that if they have moved recently, they need to update their voter registration so that they are allowed to vote on election day. In particular, if a voter has moved from one county to another prior to the voter registration books closing and he or she does not update his or her voter registration, that voter will not be allowed to vote in the general election.

If citizens are unsure whether they have registered to vote or uncertain as to where they will vote, they can view all of that information online through the Voter Information Center (VIC). The VIC will tell voters where they are registered to vote, the location of their polling site, and their political affiliation. It also provides links to elected representatives, sample ballots, and driving directions from the voter’s home to his or her polling location. VIC can be accessed at www.vote.ky.gov/vic.

To obtain a list of county clerks and other voter registration sites in your area, contact the Kentucky State Board of Elections at (502) 573-7100 or via the web at www.elect.ky.gov.

The Recession Is Over! LMAO!

In Kentucky, Former Spokesperson For Governor Steve Beshear, Vicki Glass, Pleads Guilty To Assault; Todd Lally "Ties" Greg Fisher For Mayor.

Read about Vicki Glass, and Greg Fisher/Todd Lally, (check out poll results).

Harold Meyerson: Meet The Real Un-Americans.

Meet the real un-Americans
By Harold Meyerson

There are un-Americans among us. They don't share our values, yet they control the most powerful offices in the land. We must rid ourselves of this fifth-column menace.

That's pretty much the Republican and tea party line these days. When a right-wing talk show host interviewing Sharron Angle, now the Republican senatorial candidate in Nevada, told her last year that “we have domestic enemies” and that some of them worked within “the walls of the Senate and the Congress,” Angle chirped up, “I think you're right.”

The tea partiers aren't wrong about the growing influence of un-Americans in high places. They've just misidentified who those un-Americans are.

As the right-wingers see it, even President Barack Obama's more conventional ideas have no place or precedent in the American experience. Ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, Dinesh D'Souza reasons in his summa idiotica currently on the cover of Forbes magazine, cannot be explained within the confines of American political thought. However, he writes, “if Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50 percent of their income to pay even more.”

I'd like to see D'Souza explain why the highest tax brackets during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower took 90 percent of people's incomes.

This ascription of all things Obama to alien ideologies and religions — he's a Muslim, a European socialist, an anti-colonial African Marxist — has a basis not in empirical fact, of course, but in political logic. It speaks, in powerful metaphoric terms, to that large group of white Americans who see their country slipping away. With each passing year, America grows less white, less powerful and less prosperous, at least from the perspective of all but the rich. There's no correlation between the demographic change and our economic slump, but millions of Americans believe and fear that there is. And for many of those millions, Obama has become the object of their fear and rage that their America is being lost.

In fact, a good deal of American prosperity is being lost, but if there are homegrown agents of this decline, they're not in the administration.

Consider the debate in Congress about whether to impose tariffs on Chinese imports if China continues to depress the value of its currency. Roughly 150 House members, including 45 Republicans, have authored a bill to do just that, and the Ways and Means Committee will take up the bill on Friday. Unions and some domestic manufacturers support the bill. But a large number of American businesses, in a campaign coordinated by the U.S.-China Business Council, oppose it.

Now, there's nothing un-American in opposing the legislation as such — far from it. Support for and opposition to tariffs are both as American as apple pie. The question here is whether the 220 corporations that belong to the council — household names such as Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Ford, GM, Wal-Mart, Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan Chase, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Boeing — are already so deeply invested in China as manufacturers, marketers or retailers that buy goods there to sell them here that their interests are more closely aligned with China's than with America's. Revaluing China's currency would be helpful to domestic U.S. manufacturers, their employees and the communities where those employees live and work, but America's largest companies have long since ceased to be domestic.

Given the explosive growth of the Chinese economy, it's a safe bet that every major U.S. corporation will devote greater resources to building, buying and selling there. But China, unlike the Obama administration, truly is guided by an ideology alien to most Americans — Leninism — and wields far greater control over what U.S. corporations can and can't do there than the U.S. government does over what corporations can and can't do here. Our leading companies' economic interests, and those of their Chinese hosts, whom they cross at their peril, are increasing likely to pit them against proposals that diminish China's edge, however obtained, in global competition.

As the tea partyers contend, there are un-Americans among us. They hold some of the most powerful offices in the land.

Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A. Weekly.

Roland Martin Issues First Call For Atlanta Bishop Eddie Long To Step Down. NOTE: I Disagree. The Bishop Is Innocent Until Proven Otherwise!

Bishop Eddie Long must step down
By Roland S. Martin, CNN Contributor

Editor's note: Roland S. Martin, a CNN political analyst, is a syndicated columnist and author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith," and "The First: President Barack Obama's Road to the White House." He is a commentator for TV One Cable Network and host of a Sunday morning news show.

(CNN) -- The power of any pastor over his or her parishioners is derived from their "calling" to minister the Gospel from God, or as some call it, the anointing by the Holy Spirit. But the role of a pastor -- the Bible speaks to being a shepherd of a flock -- also comes from the belief that it is their moral standing as the earthly representative of God to lead their congregations spiritually.

If you read the writings of Paul in 1 Timothy 3 (New International Version), he offers the following instructions: "Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church)...He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap."

As we witness the salacious and troubling sex allegations leveled this week against Atlanta megachurch pastor Bishop Eddie L. Long, it is clear that many are confused to hear four young men come forward and allege that the man of the cloth, the husband and father, sexually coerced them and used the power of his prophetic position to engage in sex with them.

It is even more shocking considering Long has preached with conviction against homosexuality and gay marriage.

The details outlined in three lawsuits -- a fourth man stepped forward on Friday -- have rocked the Christian community. Bishop Long isn't just a preacher with a storefront church. He oversees a massive 240-acre complex in Lithonia, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, a congregation of 25,000 members, schools, and an international ministry that is seen on TBN, Daystar, The Word Network and online. He is widely respected as a strong man of God who ministers annually to fellow pastors, men, youth and a mega women's conference.

His influence is tremendous and far reaching, even in the areas of education and politics in Georgia.

With all that said, and I fully understand that he has vigorously denied the allegations, there is no doubt in my mind that for the sake of the church, Long and his family, he needs to remove himself from the pulpit as the leader of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in order for the issue to be resolved to its conclusion.

In an interview with me on Thursday on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, Long's attorney, Craig Gillen, said his client would speak for the first time on Sunday at 11 a.m. and address the issue before his congregation.

While I disagree with waiting five days since the allegations were revealed -- if someone accused me of doing this and I know in my heart I didn't do it, I would be screaming from the top of Georgia's Stone Mountain -- Long first and foremost owes an explanation to his personal family, and then his church family.

If he does indeed stand before the New Birth family, Long should be honest and forthright, not mince words or engage in double talk. And after whatever he says, he should take it upon himself to "sit himself down."

In the Christian church, when a pastor is accused of wrongdoing, going through a divorce or violating the biblical call to be above "reproach," the senior pastor orders them to be "sat down." That means they don't carry out their ministerial duties. The point is to protect the integrity of the Word of God, as well as to allow that pastor to get his or her affairs in order.

As the leader of New Birth, there is no human authority above Long. But he has a heavenly father that he has to answer to, and he must not allow his personal travails to interfere with the good and expansive works of the church. Souls still need to be saved, people still need to be healed, the sick still must be cared for, and the naked clothed.

Yet I also hope that when Long speaks, he does one of two things: If in his mind and heart he has done no wrong, he will launch a vigorous defense of his name and integrity and vow with every fiber in his body to fight the charges, even if that means spending every dime he has and not settle the lawsuits.

But if he is guilty of what is alleged, I pray that Long doesn't stand before his church as its spiritual father and continue the charade of saying "I didn't do it" and tear into his accusers. God, Long and those young men know what took place, and as someone who has listened to many of his sermons and read his books, Long has often talked about the need for Christians, especially men, to be accountable for their actions and confess their sins.

If guilty, and if he truly cares about his enormous flock, he will stand before them and admit to the error of his ways, and not put them through more pain and heartache. He is a charismatic pastor who has always been known to preach an uncompromising Word, unwilling to say what folks want to hear, but instead, what they need to hear.

Bishop Long, your congregation and the world don't want to hear excuses. They don't want ambiguity.

Your motto at New Birth for years has been "Taking Authority." This is the time for you to live that credo out before your flock, no matter what the outcome will be.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Roland S. Martin.

Bishop Eddie Long To Those Men He Allegedly Molested: It Is "Important To Follow Your Leader And Your Master". Yes, Even If To Hell, I Guess!

Read more revealing tidbits here.

RON CHERNOW: The Founding Fathers Versus The Tea Party.

The Founding Fathers Versus the Tea Party
By RON CHERNOW

LIKE many popular insurgencies in American history, the Tea Party movement has attempted to enlist the founding fathers as fervent adherents to its cause. The very name invokes those disguised patriots who clambered aboard ships in Boston Harbor in December 1773 and dumped chests of tea into the water rather than submit to the hated tea tax. At Tea Party rallies, marchers brandish flags emblazoned with the Revolutionary slogan “Don’t Tread on Me” while George Washington impersonators and other folks in colonial garb mingle with the crowds.

Many Tea Party candidates and activists have tried to seize the moral high ground by explicitly identifying with the founders. Sharron Angle, who is mounting a spirited run against Harry Reid for a Senate seat from Nevada with Tea Party support, bristled at Mr. Reid’s contention that she is overly conservative. “I’m sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin,” she protested. “And, truly, when you look at the Constitution and our founding fathers and their writings ... you might draw those conclusions: That they were conservative. They were fiscally conservative and socially conservative.”

The Tea Party movement has further sought to spruce up its historical bona fides by laying claim to the United States Constitution. Many Tea Party members subscribe to a literal reading of the national charter as a way of bolstering their opposition to deficit spending, bank bailouts and President Obama’s health care plan. A Tea Party manifesto, called the Contract From America, even contains a rigid provision stipulating that all legislation passed by Congress should specify the precise clause in the Constitution giving Congress the power to pass such a law — an idea touted Thursday by the House Republican leadership.

But any movement that regularly summons the ghosts of the founders as a like-minded group of theorists ends up promoting an uncomfortably one-sided reading of history.

The truth is that the disputatious founders — who were revolutionaries, not choir boys — seldom agreed about anything. Never has the country produced a more brilliantly argumentative, individualistic or opinionated group of politicians. Far from being a soft-spoken epoch of genteel sages, the founding period was noisy and clamorous, rife with vitriolic polemics and partisan backbiting. Instead of bequeathing to posterity a set of universally shared opinions, engraved in marble, the founders shaped a series of fiercely fought debates that reverberate down to the present day. Right along with the rest of America, the Tea Party has inherited these open-ended feuds, which are profoundly embedded in our political culture.

As a general rule, the founders favored limited government, reserving a special wariness for executive power, but they clashed sharply over those limits.

The Constitution’s framers dedicated Article I to the legislature in the hope that, as the branch nearest the people, it would prove pre-eminent. But Washington, as our first president, quickly despaired of a large, diffuse Congress ever exercising coherent leadership. The first time he visited the Senate to heed its “advice and consent,” about a treaty with the Creek Indians, he was appalled by the disorder. “This defeats every purpose of my coming here,” he grumbled, then departed with what one senator branded an air of “sullen dignity.” Washington went back one more time before dispensing with the Senate’s advice altogether, henceforth seeking only its consent.

President Washington’s Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, wasted no time in testing constitutional limits as he launched a burst of government activism. In December 1790, he issued a state paper calling for the first central bank in the country’s history, the forerunner of the Federal Reserve System.

Because the Constitution didn’t include a syllable about such an institution, Hamilton, with his agile legal mind, pounced on Article I, Section 8, which endowed Congress with all powers “necessary and proper” to perform tasks assigned to it in the national charter. Because the Constitution empowered the government to collect taxes and borrow money, Hamilton argued, a central bank might usefully discharge such functions. In this way, he devised a legal doctrine of powers “implied” as well as enumerated in the Constitution.

Aghast at the bank bill, James Madison, then a congressman from Virginia, pored over the Constitution and could not “discover in it the power to incorporate a bank.” Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson was no less horrified by Hamilton’s legal legerdemain. He thought that only measures indispensable to the discharge of enumerated powers should be allowed, not merely those that might prove convenient. He spied how many programs the assertive Hamilton was prepared to drive through the glaring loophole of the “necessary and proper” clause. And he prophesied that for the federal government “to take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn ... is to take possession of a boundless field of power.”

After reviewing cogent legal arguments presented by Hamilton and Jefferson, President Washington came down squarely on Hamilton’s side, approving the first central bank.

John Marshall, the famed chief justice, traced the rise of the two-party system to that blistering episode, and American politics soon took on a nastily partisan tone. That the outstanding figures of the two main factions, Hamilton and Jefferson, both belonged to Washington’s cabinet attests to the fundamental disagreements within the country. Hamilton and his Federalist Party espoused a strong federal government, led by a powerful executive branch, and endorsed a liberal reading of the Constitution; although he resisted the label at first, Washington clearly belonged to this camp.

Jefferson and his Republicans (not related to today’s Republicans) advocated states’ rights, a weak federal government and strict construction of the Constitution. The Tea Party can claim legitimate descent from Jefferson and Madison, even though they founded what became the Democratic Party. On the other hand, Washington and Hamilton — founders of no mean stature — embraced an expansive view of the Constitution. That would scarcely sit well with Tea Party advocates, many of whom adhere to the judicial doctrine of originalism — i.e., that any interpretation of the Constitution must abide by the intent of those founders who crafted it.

Of course, had it really been the case that those who wrote the charter could best fathom its true meaning, one would have expected considerable agreement about constitutional matters among those former delegates in Philadelphia who participated in the first federal government. But Hamilton and Madison, the principal co-authors of “The Federalist,” sparred savagely over the Constitution’s provisions for years. Much in the manner of Republicans and Democrats today, Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians battled over exorbitant government debt, customs duties and excise taxes, and the federal aid to business recommended by Hamilton.

No single group should ever presume to claim special ownership of the founding fathers or the Constitution they wrought with such skill and ingenuity. Those lofty figures, along with the seminal document they brought forth, form a sacred part of our common heritage as Americans. They should be used for the richness and diversity of their arguments, not tampered with for partisan purposes. The Dutch historian Pieter Geyl once famously asserted that history was an argument without an end. Our contentious founders, who could agree on little else, would certainly have agreed on that.

Ron Chernow is the author of “Alexander Hamilton” and the forthcoming “Washington: A Life.”

Words To Live By.

"If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."

-- Samuel Adams

Joel Pett On "Angry". LOL.