I guess we're finally going to get to the bottom of this. CREW is headed by a former federal prosecutor and they don't like to waste time on cases they can't win:

WASHINGTON – A government watchdog group says it has filed ethics complaints against lawmakers who have rented rooms in a controversial Capitol Hill townhouse.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington - CREW for short - cites news reports that say House members and some senators have paid below-market rents to live in a house on C Street SE that is owned by a Christian prayer group known as the Fellowship. CREW wants the House and Senate ethics committees to determine whether the monthly rent, reported to be around $950, is below the market value. If so, CREW says, the discount could amount to an illegal gift.

A spokesman for one resident of the house named in CREW's complaint, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, said the rent covers a furnished room and shared bathroom. It does not include meals, housekeeping in his room or parking and is therefore in line with market prices.

Democratic Reps. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and Bart Stupak of Michigan said they no longer live in the house but that while there, the rent was fairly assessed.

Other lawmakers named in the complaint did not respond to calls for comment. They are: Republican Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas and John Ensign of Nevada, neither of whom currently live in the house. Also named in the complaint were Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. and Reps. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., and Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.

Rachel Maddow really drew blood last night with her attack on Congressional hypocrite Bart Stupak for sabotaging healthcare reform.

She reminds us exactly how Stupak lied about living at the C Street house belonging to The Family (registered as a church for tax purposes), the right-wing fundamentalist Christian cult that encourages politicians to lie their way into office so they can help form a God-centered government.

She pointed out that he paid only $600 a month for a luxury room with meals in The Family's mansion for many years, calls it what it is (a "donation in kind") and want to know if he paid taxes on it or declared it. She called on him to disclose whether he reported it and asked just who subsidized him.

I await the IRS investigation.

Dan Coats on The Young Turks from the 2008 Republican National Convention

I'm not sure if it's possible to get a more Republican candidate for Indiana than Evan Bayh, but the GOP isn't going to go down without trying. Former Senator Dan Coats has announced this morning that he will challenge Bayh for the Senate seat in the 2010 Election.

But for all of his high profile--and Dan Coats certainly does have that within the Republican Party--I'm not sure the GOP is really learning the lessons of the tea baggers distrusting the incumbents and politicians when opting to promote Coats for the Senate seat.

To wit, Coats is a member of the C-Street Family, responsible for the failed ushering of Harriet Miers through the Supreme Court confirmation process. I think his quote on Miers, who failed to capture even Republican support shows his contempt for Americans:

She certainly has the capability to be an excellent Supreme Court justice. If great intellectual powerhouse is a qualification to be a member of the court and represent the American people and the wishes of the American people and to interpret the Constitution, then I think we have a court so skewed on the intellectual side that we may not be getting representation of America as a whole.

Continue reading »

darkblack: Like, totally bogey

The Existentialist Cowboy: Obama's green energy plan is infinitely superior to that wingnut plan to turn over Social Security - the only government program to have ever run a surplus - to robber barons, speculators and fast buck artists on Wall Street.

Open Left: The Puke Funnel is trying to disrupt Copenhagen: The CRU Hack story continues

Words of Power: Jobs? Afghanistan? Healthcare? Climate? Where and when will something turn in our favor? It better be here and now.

Pensito Review: The Family: DC's C Street Group tied to proposed death penalty for gays in Uganda

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: The Angry Arab, angry asian man, AngryBlackBitch

Via Huffington Post, the latest from Bart Stupak, clearly under the loving spiritual guidance of his C Street family:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) is warning fellow Democrats not to mess with his restrictive anti-abortion amendment.

Pro-choice outrage was sparked by the inclusion of a provision in the House health care bill making it harder for private insurers to cover abortion. President Obama himself suggested that the language disrupted the status quo and should be taken out of the final legislation. Abortion rights supporters in Congress requested a meeting with the president next week to discuss the issue.

Now Stupak is saying he won't go easily.

"We won because [the Democrats] need us," Stupak said. "If they are going to summarily dismiss us by taking the pen to that language, there will be hell to pay. I don't say it as a threat, but if they double-cross us, there will be 40 people who won't vote with them the next time they need us -- and that could be the final version of this bill."

There's no questioning the historic nature of the vote. What the Democrats did to get there is pretty ugly (I can't believe we cut a deal with anti-woman C-Street true believer Bart Stupak), but we did get there, and most people will see some real improvements in their lives as a result. Now it's on to the Senate, where hopefully women's rights won't be treated as peripheral to the political process.

And in the meantime, John Boehner warns us that the bill "will dim the light of freedom." Uh huh.

Hours after President Obama exhorted Democratic lawmakers to "answer the call of history," the House hit an unprecedented milestone on the path to health-care reform, approving a trillion-dollar package late Saturday that seeks to overhaul private insurance practices and guarantee comprehensive and affordable coverage to almost every American.

After months of acrimonious partisanship, Democrats closed ranks on a 220-215 vote that included 39 defections, mostly from the party's conservative ranks. But the bill attracted a surprise Republican convert: Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana, who represents the Democratic-leaning district of New Orleans and had been the target of a last-minute White House lobbying campaign. GOP House leaders had predicted their members would unanimously oppose the bill.

Democrats have sought for decades to provide universal health care, but not since the 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid has a chamber of Congress approved such a vast expansion of coverage. Action now shifts to the Senate, which could spend the rest of the year debating its version of the health-care overhaul. Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to bring a measure to the floor before Thanksgiving, but legislation may not reach Obama's desk before the new year.

At the Capitol, Obama urged the few Democrats who were still wavering on Saturday afternoon to put aside their political fears and embrace the bill's ambitious objectives. "Opportunities like this come around maybe once in a generation," he said afterward. "This is our moment to live up to the trust that the American people have placed in us. Even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard. This is our moment to deliver."

The House legislation would for the first time require every individual to obtain insurance, and would require all but the smallest employers to provide coverage to their workers. It would vastly expand Medicaid and create a new marketplace where people could obtain federal subsidies to buy insurance from private companies or from a new government-run insurance plan.

Though some people would receive no benefits -- including about 6 million illegal immigrants, according to congressional estimates -- the bill would virtually close the coverage gap for people who do not have access to health-care coverage through their jobs.

The problems of poverty keep getting pushed from one place to another (literally). We have so many people out of work and losing their homes. What, exactly, are we going to do about it? Other than criminalize poverty, I mean:

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―A local attorney opened up his private property for homeless campers to have a place to stay, but authorities are already warning they will have to shut it down.

Attorney Mark Merin is leasing his property on 13th Street and C Street in Sacramento to about three dozen homeless men and women for one dollar a year, which is meant to give them the legal rights of lessees and property renters.

"It's a matter of human dignity, and it's life and death," said Greg Bunker, executive director of Francis House in Sacramento.

According to Sacramento police, it isn't legal to live in a tent anywhere in the city for longer than 24 hours. The department wouldn't say when, but did say that they would soon enforce the city ordinance and kick the homeless persons out of the property.

The lot is located in a mostly industrial area, with only one home backing up to the property, but the city has received complaints about the campers from nearby residents.

Politicians of both parties routinely paraphrase Abraham Lincoln's mantra that "my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side." But in fighting his own civil war to hold onto office, disgraced South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has turned Lincoln's maxim on its head. Proclaiming in an opinion piece Sunday that He will make him "a better and more effective leader," Sanford in essence declared God is on his side.

Sanford's misappropriation of the Almighty was featured prominently is his latest apology to Palmetto State residents. Among the lowlights:

"It is true that I did wrong and failed at the largest of levels, but equally true is the fact that God can make good of our respective wrongs in life. In this vein, while none of us has the chance to attend our own funeral, in many ways I feel like I was at my own in the past weeks, and surprisingly I am thankful for the perspective it has afforded...

It's in the spirit of making good from bad that I am committing to you and the larger family of South Carolinians to use this experience to both trust God in his larger work of changing me, and from my end, to work to becoming a better and more effective leader."

By "changing me," Mark Sanford does not mean steering clear of the C Street residence in Washington, an apparent den of iniquity which produced fellow Republican adulterers John Ensign and Chip Pickering. Instead, he seems to suggest God apparently will provide the playbook for Sanford's political survival.

Continue reading »

Alternet's Anna Clark interviews Jeff Sharlet about his new book, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. (You probably remember his previous book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power .) He has some really interesting things to say about this powerful, secretive movement and how it threatens democracy:

AC: Does the Family have any other counterparts in U.S. politics – groups of people that, religiously based or not, are contracting the scope of democracy?

JS: Yes, absolutely. I'm not saying that these guys are the secret puppet-masters that control the world. All I'm doing with this story is adding one more power base to our pantheon.

But the real key thing about the Family is the secrecy. Now, I disagree with Pat Robinson and James Dobson completely, 100 percent. I know they do secret things, but they are out there in the public square. They engage in democracy. Sure, it's for an undemocratic vision, but that's legitimate. But [the Family's] unusual and uncommon influence is that for so long they denied their own existence. That's starting to change, though, because of all this publicity.

AC: It's amazing that the strategy really works. The founder articulated that it would be more powerful and efficient if the Family denied its own existence, and he was right! Ronald Reagan once said at the National Prayer Breakfast, the Family's only public event, he said to the journalists in the room about the Family: ‘I could tell you more about it, but I can't. It's working precisely because it's private.' And then he said this: “I've had my moments with the press, but I have to commend them for their discretion.”You're a journalist, you know that any time a politician compliments you on your discretion, it's a problem!

But a lot of these journalists see that as a sign that they're in, they're in the inner circle. They say they're "cultivating sources." No, you're not, you hack! You're auditioning for a talking heads spot, that's what you're doing. … A lot of these journalists practice knee-jerk centrism. This idea that the center must hold – not that it will hold, but that it must hold. It's when journalists see themselves as guardians of that balance that you get in a very dangerous place.

AC: While the Family came most forcefully into the public consciousness in the wake of last year's scandals of three of its members, you write in C Street of the importance of resisting the urge to gloat about moral hypocrisy. Can you talk about why such finger-pointing is a flawed response?

JS: Because that liberal glee at right-wingers acting on desire comes from the same prudish, small, little, hard-hearted place. It's the same counting of sins that right-wingers themselves do. Maybe it's a bait-and-switch – people think they will buy this book and hear about all the naughty things Republicans do. And they will—but those things are about money and violence overseas.

Look at the story of [South Carolina Gov.] Mark Sanford in particular. He's something of a tragic figure, right? He's in this terrible, terrible marriage. Here was this guy evidently late in life going through this important stage where he realized that we love who we love and we desire who we desire, and that these things aren't based on status or calculation.

So for Sanford, the awfulness wasn't that he went to Argentina; the awfulness was that he came back. And C Street brought him back. C Street said "you must work on your marriage as an obedience to God."

When these Republicans have their sex scandals, we should all say "great." Here is an opportunity for these conservative politicians to realize that love and lust and desire are complex, that they are not about obedience. Which is not to say that you should go cheat on your wife or your husband – just that we want these guys to reach their emotional maturity. When liberals gloat over it, they just play the same game, and round and round we go. It's the same kind of erasure of desire.

Continue reading »