Watch as Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and General Martin E. Dempsey (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in an unclassified hearing about the Congressional authorization for the use of force in Syira.
A century-old Florida state school for troubled boys, Dozier Reform School, is now the site of a forensic investigation after more than 50 bodies were discovered, some in unmarked graves, next to a garbage dump on the side of campus where the African-American students were housed.
The University of South Florida anthropologists conducting the investigation this weekend worked for months to identify more unmarked graves and then had to appeal directly to Governor Rick Scott (R) to exhume the bodies they found, after his Secretary of State refused permission for the dig. Head anthropologist Erin Kimmerle told CNN, "These are children who came here and died, for one reason or another, and have just been lost in the woods." She is hoping to be able to match the DNA of some of the recovered remains to families who have been waiting for answers, and to determine some of the causes of the deaths of the bodies she finds. "When there's no knowledge and no information, then people will speculate and rumors will persist or questions remain," she added.
Christian Wells of the University of South Florida told Al Jazeera, "There is a legal obligation of the State of Florida to return those remains to their families for proper burial. And some have argued there's also a moral obligation that the state has to do this."
One person who expects her relative's remains to be unearthed and finally returned for burial is Tananarive Due, whose great-uncle Robert Stephens was reportedly stabbed by another child at the facility in 1937 but whose remains were never returned to his family. She hopes to clear up the circumstances of his death and bury him in a family plot. Another is Ovell Smith Krell, whose brother Owen Smith ran away from home at 14 and was sent to the facility after being caught with a stolen car. Officials told Smith's parents that he died of pneumonia after his second escape attempt and was buried on the facility's grounds, but a fellow inmate told them that Owen was shot by school officials during the attempt and buried to hide it.
Students like Richard Huntley, who was sent to the school in the late fifties, told Al Jazeera that he and his fellow inmate-students were forced to do farm work under dangerous conditions under threats of worse. "This, to me, is a form of slavery," he said, "because they, damn it, beat you to what they wanted you to be."
Boys who didn't comply with orders were sent to "The White House," which Huntley likened to a "torture chamber." He said, "If you didn't know how to pray [before being sent to The White House], you learned pretty fast."
Surviving students like Huntley formed an organization called The White House Boys, to press for justice for themselves and closure for the families of the boys who died at the institution. One group leader, Robert Straley, told the Associated Press, "At some point they are going to find more bodies, I'm dead certain of that. There has to be a white graveyard on the white side." He suspects there are at least 100 undiscovered sets of remains on the site.
An earlier investigation by the Florida spurred by the White House boys that began in 2008 was closed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2010 despite being unable to account for all the bodies in the cemetery or the boys reported missing from the school. Police most recently told Al Jazeera that there was no way to sustain a criminal investigation since all but one of the school's former employees was dead and the remaining employee would be unable to testify.
Watch video of the case by Al Jazeera America, below:
Watch more video, courtesy of WFTV Orlando, below:
Watch another account, courtesy of WEAR in Pensacola:
President Obama says that there is no potential for "boots on the ground" or a "long-term campaign" in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons.
Watch the video, courtesy of NBC News below:
President Barack Obama, former President Jimmy Carter and former President Bill Clinton will be joined by civil rights activist and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), , Caroline Kennedy, LBJ's daughter Lynda Johnson Robb, Oprah Winfrey, Forest Whitaker and Jamie Foxx at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream Speech." BeBe Winans, LeAnn Rimes and the girl group Identity4Pop are among the scheduled performers.
Watch live, courtesy of NBC News, below:
Watch live as mostly-female constituents defend San Diego Bob Filner (D) at a San Diego City Council Meeting over charges that he sexually harassed many women during his time as mayor.
The below feed is courtesy of NBC News.
Watch Bradley Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, discuss his client's sentence in a live news conference around 1:30 ET, courtesy of NBC News:
I don't know Glenn Greenwald personally. He could be the world's kindest, most pleasant, incredibly generous individual in real life, with smiles for all passers-by and 25+ percent tips for every server. He could whistle happy tunes while feeding the city's homeless, be the understanding shoulder on which all his close friends and family members cry, and even nurse abandoned animals back to health and find them good homes in between 2,000-word articles and argumentative tweets.
Why does that seem so unlikely to some of you? You've never met someone who's nicer in real life than on the Internet? Bullsh*t.
I have "met" Greenwald on the Internet. It was, to put it mildly, not exactly a pleasant experience. Insults and straw man arguments mixed wildly with what might otherwise have come across as legitimate critiques, complaints were lodged, high dudgeon was evinced, grudges were held, distance was kept (and much of this was mutual). Anyone who has mixed it up with Greenwald online -- and this is a vast universe of people, let us be clear -- would likely agree that their interactions follow much the same pattern (after which one can expect a wave of Greenwaldian fan boys to descend on one's Twitter account like L. Frank Baum's flying monkeys, all bared-teeth and vicious insults brandished on behalf of the supposed honor of their idol). But this doesn't mean I know what kind of person the real-life Greenwald is -- or that my knowledge of that or lack thereof even matters, when it comes to his reporting or his opinion work.
But I get it. People don't like Greenwald (or at least the Internet Greenwald). And I get that it is hard to not hold a grudge after being flamed by someone, and it's hard not to let one's negative personal opinion of someone impact one's impression of their work (and, Glenn, if you're reading, this goes for you, too). And, I see quite clearly the potential for professional jealousy to be evinced by some reporters' reporters over a "mere blogger" getting what is likely one of the biggest scoops of 2013 (but anyone who has a bigger one can email me) or those people who see his (and his allies') criticism of the Obama Administration as the major threat to this President's legacy (which it is and rightly should be).
But my friend -- and Glenn's new colleague at The Guardian -- Spencer Ackerman summed up how I feel in a few words yesterday after the story about Greenwald's partner being detained by UK officials under their terrorism law broke.
I get that @ggreenwald makes some of you feel a type of way. He used to be mean to me too. We got over it, because adults. This = big deal.
— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) August 18, 2013
Greenwald's partner, David Miranda -- like far too many people of color passing through countries like the U.S. and the UK, let's be clear -- was held without charges for 9 hours under that UK's terrorism law. He was carrying documents for Greenwald on behalf of The Guardian -- in other words, he was acting as an employee of a newspaper that has been reporting on potentially unconstitutional violations of Americans' rights justified under the guise of protecting us from terrorism, and was thus held as a terrorist himself. And the government confiscated all of Miranda's electronic property (which, you may recall, some people applauding the UK's actions against Miranda were pretty upset last week about law enforcement's use of civil forfeiture against people who face no charges and may have done no wrong) even though they arguably didn't need to keep all of it and were probably confiscating the work product of a journalist's researcher and a large, journalistic enterprise.
But, yes everyone, let's argue about how Greenwald is an a**hole.
Yes, we should've had a debate about the Patriot Act at the time. We should have more clarity on the FISA courts, and more oversight of what the Administration is doing with and has done with them. I'm not comfortable knowing that loopholes let the government read my email, even occasionally, and I'm not comfortable with traveling to or even through the UK if the risk is getting stopped for nine hours and having my electronics searched and confiscated because this website has also published stories about the Snowden investigation. Is that really so outré? Are there people who think that the government and the national security apparatus we've woven post-9/11 have never overstepped the bounds of what is legal and/or appropriate? Do you not think that someone needs to point that out? Do you not think that the person who does is likely to be a whistleblower type who is probably no saint him- or herself? Or that the reporter(s) who publish that information and lay bare that overreaching might not be the world's most pleasant people?
Do we really need them to be the types of people we want to have a beer with?
If I'm being generous, I'd suggest that Greenwald is pugnacious to a fault, thin-skinned about his own life and faults (but who among us isn't?), prone to turning every argument into a comment section (or Twitter) jury trial with a self-selected jury of fans -- and really, really, fundamentally unhappy with how much liberty the government is taking (or borrowing), much of it without our knowledge, to supposedly insure our security. Maybe the former bits make him unlikeable to many, but they don't make his work or reporting on the latter any less valid.
In the latest issue of the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports, Doctors Krishanth Naidu, Amanda Chung and Maurice Mulcahy used the unfortunate experience of one Canberra man[Ed. note: Medical pictures at link are NSFW] to illustrate the importance of training doctors to remove self-inserted foreign objects from people's urinary tracts -- and, in this case, they were asked to contend with a nearly 4-inch, 3-tined dessert fork.
The 70-year-old man arrived at the emergency room with visible blood in his urine, but no other apparent symptoms -- that is, until he revealed to doctors that he'd fully inserted a 4-inch dessert fork in his urethra for "autoerotic stimulation." The doctors wrote, "On examination, the fork was not visible, but palpable within the penile urethra." The doctors were able to confirm the man's story with an X-ray (reprinted here), and further examination confirmed that the man had inserted the fork without perforating his urethra.
Doctors used lidocaine gel and forceps to successfully remove the fork without cutting into the man's penis while he was under general anaesthesia, and conducted a post-removal exam that identified only "mucosal abrasions" after it was removed. The patient was sent home after he woke up and urinated "well."
The doctors added:
If one reviews current literature, it is apparent that the human mind is uninhibited let alone creative. The wide array of self-inserted foreign bodies include needles, pencils, ball point pens, pen lids, garden wire, copper wire, speaker wire, safety pins, Allen keys, wire-like objects (telephone cables, rubber tubes, feeding tubes, straws, string), toothbrushes, household batteries, light bulbs, marbles, cotton tip swabs, plastic cups, thermometers, plants and vegetables (carrot, cucumber, beans,hay, bamboo sticks, grass leaves), parts of animals (leeches, squirrel tail, snakes, bones), toys, pieces of latex gloves, blue tack, Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices (IUCD), tampons, pessaries, powders (cocaine), fluids (glue, hot wax).
They additionally note that most patients only go to the ER after "multiple [unsuccessful] removal attempts, which risk urethral injury and foreign body migration." In addition to understanding how to diagnose and remove such objects, the authors believe it is important to assess patients' motives, to prevent a re-occurrence or further injury.
The full report is available here in PDF form. Please note that it contains illustrations of the procedure which some readers may find graphic or NSFW.
["A Man In A Suit With A Fork In His Hand" on Shutterstock]
On September 10, 2013, registered Democrats in New York City -- many of them women -- will head to the polls to determine their party's candidate for mayor (and, mostly likely, the next mayor of New York City, given its demographics). And it is for that reason, nominally, that former Congressman Anthony Weiner remains in the news. Oh, sure, he wants to be the next mayor -- but given the campaign-tanking revelations that he sent more dick pics to and had phone sex with yet another "fan" in order to self-gratify after he resigned from Congress, it seems like Weiner has at least a few other "priorities" besides helping middle class New Yorkers.
With that in mind, it's almost impossible to listen to his debates, his commercials or his public appearances without hearing how he might've sounded and what he might have said to his long-distance paramours -- and Tuesday night's debate was no different. Here's a vague approximation of what Anthony Weiner really sounds like to at least some of his would-be constituents.
[Image via AFP]
Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, issued strongly-worded letters to the chairman of NBC Entertainment, Robert Greenblatt, and CNN President Jeff Zucker today after both networks announced plans to make and air movies about Hillary Clinton. In them, he lambasts the networks for being unfair to potential Democratic and Republican candidates alike with their plans -- and threatens to keep them from airing any Republican debates in 2016 if they don't shut down the productions.
"[A]s American citizens, certainly you recognize why many are astounded at your actions, which appear to be a major network's thinly-veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election," he wrote to both men. Both letters end with the same threat: "If you have not agreed to pull this programming prior to the start of the RNC's Summer Meeting on August 14[, 2013], I will seek a binding vote of the RNC stating that the committee will neither partner with you in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates which you sponsor."
NBC's miniseries on Hillary, in which the story is said to being during the time period of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Diane Lane is set to star, was announced on July 27, 2013 and is set to air in the fall. CNN's documentary, which they plan to release in theaters before airing on CNN in 2014, is already in pre-production. Both will undoubtedly be better productions than Citizen's United 2008 attempt, "Hillary: The Movie," which -- despite poor reviews -- managed to overturn campaign finance reform and usher in the post-Citizens United era of unlimited, anonymous campaign-related donations.
Priebus referenced the earlier movie in his letters, writing, "Liberals complained noisily when Citizens United sought to air a pay-per-view documentary on Hillary Clinton prior to the 2008 election and yet they're conspicuously silent now [that the miniseries and documentaries are scheduled]."In his letter to CNN, Priebus added, "They must trust that you're doing her a favor."
Preibus' letter to NBC also accused them of timing the miniseries to deliberately subvert to political process. "You company has expressly stated that your choice to air the miniseries in the near future would avoid concerns of running afoul of equal time election laws," he wrote. "This suggests a deliberate attempt at influencing American political opinion in favor a preferred candidate, not to mention a guilty conscience."
Though the debates often preempt networks' original programming and the advertising dollars that popular shows can attract, the threat likely carries more weight for CNN than NBC. Last Thursday, an episode of "Anderson Cooper 360" had only about 518,000 viewers according to Nielsen, while CNN's Republican debates in 2011 and 2012 garnered between 4.7 and 5.4 million viewers. NBC, on the other hand, saw 7.1 million viewers turn in for its January 2012 debate -- roughly equivalent to the number of people who watched a re-run of CBS's "NCIS" last week.
Update: CNN issued the following statement, as published by Huffington Post:
CNN Films, a division of CNN Worldwide, commissioned a documentary about Hillary Clinton earlier this year. It is expected to premiere in 2014 with a theatrical run prior to airing on CNN. This documentary will be a non-fiction look at the life of a former First Lady and Secretary of State. Instead of making premature decisions about a project that is in the very early stages of development and months from completion, we would encourage the members of the Republican National Committee to reserve judgment until they know more. Should they decide not to participate in debates on CNN, we would find it curious, as limiting their debate participation seems to be the ultimate disservice to voters.
Internet activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz's suicide in January 2013 shocked friends, family and admirers alike. Friends, family and fellow activists blamed an overzealous prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's office -- an allegation prosecutors denied -- over Swartz's efforts to download the entire JSTOR academic database on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's servers via a hidden computer and a program which allowed him to do so remotely. MIT, which had an open guest access policy but maintained "neutrality" on the federal prosecution of Swartz, came under fire as well, prompting the university to undertake a review of its policies.
The much-delayed report is notable for its in-depth timeline of events, which document the events which led to Swartz's arrest from the university's perspective, the tick-tock of the prosecution as it made its way from the state to federal courts at the insistence of the U.S. Attorney's office (USAO) -- which denied the state access to evidence and forced them to drop their case against Swartz for accessing university property -- and the series of meetings taken by the university leaders, its Office of General Counsel (OGC) and its outside counsel prior to Swartz's suicide.
Taken together, it provides a clearer picture of the gaping holes in the prosecution's case against Swartz, the prosecutor's mindset -- which appears to bear out at least some of the allegations of Swartz's supporters -- and MIT's own utter lack of interest in what occurred on their own campus and for which a young man was being prosecuted with them as the alleged victim.
1. The U.S. Attorney blamed Demand Progress's blogpost and petition effort for his decision to seek further charges and more jail time for Aaron than initially outlined.
The prosecutor said that the straw that broke the camel's back was that when he indicted the case, and allowed Swartz to come to the courthouse as opposed to being arrested, Swartz used the time to post a "wild Internet campaign" in an effort to drum up support. This was a "foolish" move that moved the case "from a human one-on-one level to an institutional level." The lead prosecutor said that on the institutional level cases are harder to manage both internally and externally.
2. Though the staff costs to MIT were part of the fact pattern establishing the charges against Swartz, the university spent twice as much money dealing with prosecutors as with the actual "crime."
MIT applied hourly rates as follows: (a) for the IS&T personnel, it applied rates used to estimate software development costs; and (b) for the personnel with MIT Libraries, it used actual salary and benefits to calculate an hourly rate. In this letter, MIT informed the prosecutor that for some of the individuals listed, identified by name, the relevant time expended by them occurred after law enforcement became involved. Although this calculation was not made in the letter, applying the estimated hours to the hourly rates would have resulted in a figure of $10,104.75. The portion of this amount incurred before the arrest was under $3,500. The remaining time, and its estimated value, was incurred responding to the prosecution's requests for documents and information after the arrest of Aaron Swartz.
3. When MIT explained to prosecutors that the continued prosecution of Swartz would be expensive and potentially harmful to the university, the U.S. Attorney compared their problems to that of a rape victim asked to account for her consensual sex life (and said that all defendants who choose to go to trial, which they are guaranteed under the Constitution, are just hurting victims).
MIT's counsel noted that no one at the Institute was looking forward to the time, disruption and stress involved in testifying at hearings and trial. The prosecutor's response was that it disturbed him whenever a defendant "systematically re-victimized" the victim, and that was what Swartz was doing by dragging MIT through hearings and a trial. He analogized attacking MIT's conduct in the case to attacking a rape victim based on sleeping with other men.
4. The prosecution never asked MIT to confirm or deny whether Swartz was authorized to use the network -- but being allegedly unauthorized to use the network was key to the charges against Swartz -- and MIT never volunteered this information.
As discussed in the next section, MIT was expressly named as one of two victims of Aaron Swartz's conduct, the other victim being JSTOR. Among the charges was that Aaron Swartz had violated Section 18 of the United States Code §1030(the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA) by "accessing the MIT network without authorization" or by "exceeding authorized access"; and that the damages to MIT and JSTOR exceeded $5,000. For the CFAA, authorization of access to the MIT network is based on the rules of access set down by MIT (just as authorization of access to JSTOR documents is based on the rules set down by JSTOR). Thus MIT might be expected to play an important role in the interpretation of its access rules. Should there be a trial, MIT employees would likely be witnesses called to explain the rules. Moreover, during the plea bargain process, MIT might be asked to comment on the rules and could take the opportunity to come forward with a statement about the rules.Despite the importance to the legal proceedings of MIT's interpretation of its own rules, the initial investigation paid little attention to how these rules applied to the authorization of people attempting to access the network. According to the Cambridge Detective involved in the prosecution, he asked repeatedly whether the laptop found in the closet was authorized to be there and to do what it was doing: he was told "no." On the other hand, the Review Panel spoke with personnel from IS&T and OGC, and with MIT's outside counsel, about their interviews and discussions with federal law enforcement during the entire period of the government's prosecution, from the date of Swartz's arrest until his suicide. They reported uniformly that no one from the government's investigatory team asked specifically whether Swartz — the person, as opposed to his laptop — was allowed to use MIT's network, nor were they specifically asked whether this use constituted access without authorization or access that exceeded authorization. (This distinction between the person and the laptop and its significance for the CFAA is discussed in Appendix 11.) Similarly, until very late 2012, Aaron Swartz's defense team did not raise any questions about this issue in their interviews with MIT personnel or their discussions with OGC or with MIT's outside counsel. Nor did Swartz's defense raise this issue with MIT prior to filing its motions to suppress (see section II.B.2), which referenced the allegations of unauthorized access and MIT's policies with regard to those allegations.
Consistent with its neutrality posture (see sect ion III.A.3), MIT paid little attention to the details of the charges. MIT did not undertake its own analysis of whether the crime of gaining unauthorized access or exceeding authorized access of MIT's network had occurred. Nor did it bring to the attention of the USAO or the defense the possibility that MIT's policies and practices cast doubt on this allegation in the indictment, as the Media Lab Director had noted that MIT could consider doing (see section III.B.1).
5. Despite supposedly maintaining a posture of "neutrality" of responses (but not outcomes) to prosecution and defense requests of the university, which included a refusal to openly call for the end of the prosecution, MIT reversed course in October 2012 and chose to support the prosecution's efforts against Swartz to maintain their own reputation in the face of his defense's efforts to exonerate him.
MIT decided that it would not be neutral with regard to defending MIT's employees or attacks made on the Institute's integrity. That concern played out in the months that followed.For example, when the government's investigation had begun, in January 2011, OGC made the decision that the lead prosecutor, the Secret Service Agent, and the Cambridge Police detective could directly telephone and email previously interviewed IS&T employees without first going through an MIT attorney for follow-up questions, provided no new topics were covered (see section III.A.1). In early September 2012, after consultation with outside counsel, OGC decided to allow this direct conduct to continue during the government's preparation for the suppression hearings and trial. However, this did not occur for the defense: the defense was never given permission to interview or consult with any MIT employee without the presence of an MIT attorney, nor did it ever ask for such permission.
Another example is that MIT's outside counsel conveyed to the government what MIT wanted the government to consider in its arguments that MIT had not violated law in gathering evidence.
A third example concerns document production. When MIT provided documents in December 2012 to the defense (pursuant to subpoena), MIT's outside counsel later provided — without being asked — the same documents to the government. (This occurred in early January 2013.) However, MIT did not, reciprocally, voluntarily provide to the defense the same documents that it provided to the government. Similarly, MIT did not produce to the defense, even though requested by subpoena, documents that the defense sought from MIT but that MIT had already provided to the government.
And one extra:
Swartz allegedly led MIT police officers on a foot chase around Cambridge prior to his initial arrest.
When the cyclist reached the north side of Central Square, the officer who was following him decided to pull ahead of him and stop him to ascertain his identity.While exiting his car, the officer held his credentials so that they could be seen and motioned for the bicyclist to stop. The bicyclist complied. The officer explained that he was an MIT Police officer and wanted to speak with him. The cyclist first said that he didn't speak with strangers. The officer again displayed his badge, as well as his photo ID. The cyclist then said that MIT Police were not "real cops" and refused to talk to the officer. At that point the cyclist dropped the bicycle to the ground and started running back toward Central Square, on Massachusetts Avenue. The officer chased him briefly, but the individual was outrunning him, and the officer returned to his car, made a U-turn, and followed, maintaining visual contact. The suspect slowed to a walk, and the officer, still in his car, watched and followed him. The first MIT Police officer radioed the second and told him where the suspect was located. Once near the suspect, both MIT Police officers and the special agent left their vehicles and chased the suspect around parked cars. They apprehended and handcuffed him.
[Image of of Aaron Swartz in 2008 via Wikimedia Commons]
Though Weiner is flagging in the polls, which show a majority of New York City's Democrats want him to pull out, there are at least a few voters who remain unconvinced that compulsive junk-photography might be a disqualifying activity for the city's next leader.
For those voters, Northern Virginia resident-turned-comedy-rapper Remy has a few choice thoughts, set to the tune of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" (a song which, like Weiner, is the subject of feminist controversy and parody).
"You want someone who's not a total idiot?" Remy asks. "Well you can have 'em, that kind of genius. Give me the Ansel Adams of pixeled [sic] penis." (Notably, most of Weiner's now-infamous crotch-selfies were, unlike Ansel Adams' work, in color.)
Watch the entire video, courtesy of Remy and Reason.tv, below:
In the wake of everyone from Larry Craig to Elliot Spitzer, from Jesse James to Ashton Kutcher, it has always seemed to me that it took more than a small measure of self-delusion and heightened sexual satisfaction for former Congressman-cum-mayoral-candidate Anthony Weiner (D) to believe that his online sexual escapades would never be made public. All but a creature of the news cycle, Weiner excelled at getting himself on camera even as, as Richard Kim at The Nation noted yesterday, he never exactly managed to be very effective at getting his bills on his own leadership's radar. So you can't tell me that a guy who managed at every turn to get his face in the papers didn't realize that there would be a readership -- or viewership -- for something as salacious as him sexting women who were not his wife, nor a few scorned-feeling women in his wake interested in publicizing that in order to get a little revenge.
But at the point at which multiple women came forward with transcripts and dick pics to share with the world at large, forcing Weiner to resign his Congressional seat and retreat in disgrace, it is impossible to believe that anyone, no matter how self-deluded or in need of a quick sexual fix, could avoid the realization that baring his shorn scrotum for the camera yet again would result in thousands, if not millions, of other people seeing that image burned into their retinas. So Weiner's admission today that he not only bared his junk and explained his sexual fantasies in banal-but-granular detail for "between six and 10" women prior to his resignation, but that he did so for at least an additional three women after -- some while he was even in the process of rehabbing his public image for his political comeback -- leads me to but one inevitable and horrifying conclusion.
Anthony "Carlos Danger" Weiner doesn't just get off on showing a few women his package here and there. He gets off on knowing we're all eventually going to be looking at it, and talking about it.
[Anthony Weiner speaks to the media after courting voters outside a Harlem subway station on May 23, 2013. Image via AFP.]
Groundswell -- the group email list and weekly meeting sponsored by "a balance of social conservatives, national security conservatives, and constitutional conservatives" (and, notably, not fiscal conservatives) -- was established to attack liberals and progressives, stymy President Barack Obama's agenda and push Republican leaders to hew more closely to a more conservative agenda, David Corn at Mother Jones revealed today. But, perhaps luckily for some progressives and Republicans alike, their proposed methods (and grammar) leave a bit to be desired.
Corn wrote:
One of the influential conservatives guiding the group is Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a columnist for the Daily Caller and a tea party consultant and lobbyist. Other Groundswell members include John Bolton, the former UN ambassador; Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy; Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women's Forum; Catherine Engelbrecht and Anita MonCrief of True the Vote; Allen West, the former GOP House member; Sue Myrick, also a former House GOPer; Diana Banister of the influential Shirley and Banister PR firm; and Max Pappas, a top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The group, which meets at Judicial Watch headquarters at the same time as a longer-standing conservative meeting chaired by fiscally conservative Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist -- who is deemed by some members of Groundswell as being insufficiently opposed to LGBT rights and insufficientlyIslamophobic -- has also incorporated folks from Breitbart News (including chairman Steve Bannon and reporters Matthew Boyle and Mike Flynn), a Fox News contributor, several senior Republican Congressional aides and a former member of ALEC.
With all that conservative supposed thought leadership, one might expect their efforts to derail a progressive agenda and curtail the power of movement Republicans to surpass the banal. One would be sorely mistaken. Below, a short sampling of the more laughable ideas bandied about by group members in the documents leaked to David Corn.
1. "At its weekly meetings, the group aims to strengthen the right's messaging by crafting Twitter hashtags."
2. Defeat the nomination of Labor Secretary nominee Thomas Perez by convincing people that he is "is extremely antagonistic toward whites."
3. Convince Americans that John Kerry cannot be trusted as Secretary of State because "Kerry's son in law is an Iranian American with extensive family still in Iran."
4. "If we were all gay illegal aliens, the party likes [sic] us."
5. Re-brand efforts to restrict access to the polls through voter ID programs and strict scrutiny of minority voters as a "Voter Rights" campaign.
6. Win the hearts and minds of "minorities" by re-positioning themselves as "Fredrick Douglas[sic] Republican[s]," instead of tea partiers or conservatives.
7. Refer to immigration reform as "OBAMAGRATION"
8. Hype the "Fast and the Furious" controversy and the Benghazi embassy attack some more.
9. "A 15 sec internet featuring ethnically diverse children on a merry-go-round [soft music]… Nuclear explosion."
10. "Write articles on [sic] 4th grade level!"
[Image of John Bolton at CPAC via Gage Skidmore on Flickr, Creative Commons licensed]
Watch as President Barack Obama addresses an audience in Warrensburg, Missouri about his economic reform plans, including the budget negotiations, immigration, education and strengthening the middle class, courtesy of NBC News, below:
Copyright © 2023 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | Masthead | Privacy Policy | Manage Preferences
For corrections contact corrections@rawstory.com, for support contact support@rawstory.com.
