tom delay

... Even If It Is In Dry Dock.

What is up with all these high level Republican / White House departures? Some we know about, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Delay, Larry Craig and now we have the second highest ranking Republican, Senator Trent Lott, leaving five years before his seat was expected to be contested, causing the Katrina stricken state of Mississippi to spend over a million some odd dollars to hold a special election just to replace him. Why?

Yeah, McHenry was hanging with Tom Delay at the opening celebration of Tom's new company, First Principles.

I guess voter fraud and financial improprieties are all the rage for the DC party-goer.

And ceegars.

Frontpaged by Anglico. I will happily frontpage any stories about the cigar-sucking pervert that passes for a Congressman in the Party of Greed.

Little Patty McHenry, the miniature pit bully of North Carolina is back in the news. He's mentioned prominently in today's New York Times Politics Blog under the heading "It's not Whining."

After a discussion of Steny Hoyer's move into the grander quarters of Tom Delay's former office, Kate Phillips, who hosts the The Times' blog, reports that there was a gathering of disaffected Republicans upstairs. She describes seeing our Rep. McHenry "waving his hands and stomping his feet" for the benefit of the press, and then he whined at the very highest register of his irritating little voice, "It is so hypocritical, just on its face!"

The NY Times today published an article by Philip Shenon called The Hammer Strikes a Comeback Blow about Tom DeLay's new blog but completely omitted the fact that when the blog started up a 11 days ago it was quickly bombarded with unflattering unmoderated comments and just as quickly taken down to be restarted in a moderated format with the offending comments removed. Tom DeLay blew it and the NY Times blew it by not reporting on his false start in this fluff piece about DeLay that displays very little knowledge about blogging.

Not to worry. Enterprising blogger James J. Risser saved the original for posterity (or posteriority) at tomdelaydotcom.blogspot.com

True to earlier reports that Patrick McHenry has become the designated pit bull for House Republicans, there's a quote offered from the quarrelsome Congressman in today's Washington Times. This staunchly conservative paper has been making much of a mention in the Ethics Panel report on the Mark Foley scandal that Rahm Emmanuel may have had early knowledge of Foley's unpleasant e-mails. The Washington Times is trying to expand this insinuation into a story, without any corroboration, that Emmanuel shopped the e-mails to newspapers before November's election.

As promised earlier, the new Internet ad:

AZ-08,CO-07,IA-01,IN-02,IN-08,IN-09,KY-04,NC-11,NM-01

What do they have in common? Bob Perry and a new Republican 527 called Americans for Honesty on Issues that has popped up to run negative ads against 9 Democratic House candidates.  Some of the negative ads have already run in Iowa and Colorado.

The Strategy Group received $14,136.66 from Americans for Honesty on Issues for making a "Heart in Tennessee" ad production, date of disbursement 10/05/06 and Pathfinder Marketing received $114,454.00 for the "Cable/Broadcast Media Buy" for date of disbursement 9/29/06. The candidate listed is "Joseph Heath Shuler"

click on the pic to enlarge. the hi-res original will be available soon is available now by clicking here. (warning to dial-up users - it's 9.44 megabytes)

even at 18% of the original size you'll still be able to make out the individuals in the source images.

In the 2003-‘04 election cycle, NC Congressman Charles Taylor (R-11) received three times as much in donations from energy-related political action committees (PACs) as he had in the three previous election cycles, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In 2003-04, Taylor received $51,531 from energy PACs. From 1997-2002, Taylor averaged $14,995 in oil, gas, mining, and power company PAC donations. In the 2005-06 cycle he has so far received $22,750.

And surprise, surprise! In a remarkable coincidence with absolutely no relationship to all that lovin’ from the energy industries, in 2003 Taylor just “happened” to write two particularly controversial pieces of legislation for their benefit.

I realize we are trying to concentrate on local North Carolina politics here, but today's Washington Post article about Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff is an important piece. It is stunning and should be required reading for anyone in the least bit interested in politics.

Not only does it look like Jack Abramoff is going to sing like a little birdie next week, it looks like he's going to have a lot more to sing about than we first thought.

The Washington Post is running an in-depth article on The U.S. Family Network, a group with ties to both DeLay and Abramoff. From the WaPo: