Issa's Cursed House of Seven Gables

Has there ever been a moment in the history of House of Representatives when one political party engaged en masse in a witch hunt?  That's the valid question that can be raised by the gang of Republicans led by Rep. Darrell Issa in voting Attorney General  Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress.

How dare Issa, the California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and wealthiest congressman of Capitol Hill (several hundred million $$).

You need to understand that this sinister grandstander said before the vote that he had no evidence  that Holder had any knowledge of the screwed-up undercover gun deal that was to lead to drug dealers in Mexico.  No evidence.  So what!  If Holder had agreed to add a few more documents to the  thousands that the Justice Department had  already turned over to Issa, who knows?  There might been a sliver of damning  information leading to Holder.  That's the Issa narrative, at least.

Folks, this isn't even good political farce.   It's a power-mad committee chairman leading his lemmings who are all over the Tea Party-driven House. Issa had to know that his stunt  would go nowhere outside the boundaries of his captives on Capitol Hill.  The Justice Department quickly announced that it had no intention of prosecuting Holder,  the first presidential  cabinet member to be voted in contempt. That's of no consequence to Issa.  He had already succeeded in showing the Obama Administration who was boss on Capitol Hill, such as this monster is.

The Congressional Black Caucus and its white allies in the House marched out of the chamber before the vote to show Issa that they had no patience for  playing his game of seeking  and destroying an African-American attorney general.  Issa's shameful behavior should have erased any hopes  among black voters that the GOP is on their side.

Issa  has turned his side in the House of Representatives into Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables, which existed under a curse.

Roberts: The Republicans unmentionable justice

 

Although the Republican leadership (?) has had very little to say about Chief Justice John Roberts, who was considered one of the good ol' boys in the conservatives' family, the party's raucous  Noise Wing is having a nervous breakdown over  Roberts' "betrayal".  Very shortly you will see IMPEACH ROBERTS  bumperstickers and torturered versions of it on Tea Party placards wherever three or more anarchists assemble.  (Or possibly on the door to Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Robart's office, now that he has lovingly cast himself in the cradle of the Tea Partiers' arms.)

Such  hostility toward a Republican chief justice has happened before.  That was back in the 1950s when racists and anti-communists joined  their attacks on Chief Justice Earl Warren, calling for his impeachment on billboards and other public places. Their grievance: Warren's progressive positions on desegregation as well as  the rights of criminals.  As we know, their virulent  campaign didn't work.  Nor will today's assault  on Roberts.

Still, for the other side, Roberts is a double windfall.  He not only  shocked the pundits and the right-wing panderers in sustaining the health care mandate.  He offered the Democrats a rare opportunity to praise a Bush appointee to the Supreme Court.  Can you imagine how much worse it would have been if a liberal chief justice had saved the health plan?  I don't want to think about it.

It was often said that only Richard Nixon's  own  fixation against the Red World  could have steeled him against charges of treason as he headed to China  - the first president ever to do do - to open relations between the U.S. and Chairman Mao. Considering the state of anti-Communist fervor in this country at that time , inflamed by the late Sen.  Joe McCarthy, a Democratic president who would have dared to go to China  on a diplomatic mission would have been barred from returning to these shores.

In Ohio, the current response from the GOP mandarins was hardly surprising:   Now that the milk has been spilled, there was only one solution:  Throw out President Obama in November and repeal the law.  With what?  They don't say. But what else can a senseless party of hollow suits, from Romney on down, say?

Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who also serves as the director of the Ohio Department of Insurance, has already rejected an insurance exchange under the law, arguing that she doesn't have enough information from the Feds.  A woman in her lofty position could ask, don't you think?

Meantime, Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine, who has staked his  reputation  as a minor legal scholar on his belief that the mandate is unconstitutional, was among the AGs who joined the lawsuit  that drove  the issue to the Supreme Court.  He told  the Associated Press that the health care reform law will be the "preeminent issue of the presidential campaign". He  said he will continue  to fight the law because it compels people to "violate their religious principles".  He's been wrong before.  He was the Romney supporter during the GOP primaries who jumped ship and endorsed Rick Santorum when he erringly  concluded that Santorum would be the party  nominee.

Religious principles? Oh, now we're getting to the bottom of this, which leads me to wonder whether the AG wants to serve as the state's top lawyer or as a robed bishop or preacher.

The coming months will be pretty  ugly.  If totally senseless, too.


P.S. The A.P.'s long wrapup of the comments of Ohio Republicans did not contain a single mention of  Justice R-----s.    

Words from Supreme Court 'authority' Rand Paul

Late words from the Rand Paulpit:   

''Just because a couple of people on the Supreme Court declare something to be constitutional does not make it so"

Right .  And just because people  call you senator doesn't mean you're not  totally mad.

Surely Senator Paul jests. Not.

Let's see.  There was Mad King George.  And Mad King Ludwig.  That's pretty tough company  for Sen. Rand Paul, but the Kentucky Republican is getting closer to making it a threesome.

Paul added another  claim to his bogeyman  behavior in the Senate this week by strangely linking federal flood insurance to the abortion issue. He warned that he would block a bill extending FEMA's flood insurance program for five more years unless the Senate  voted on a  measure declaring that life begins at the moment of conception - the so-called personhood concept.

Surely, he jests.   Surely,  he doesn't.  And his timing is awful, coming just as flooding caused by  Tropical Storm Debby was driving tens of thousands of Floridians from their homes.  Paul says he's "just trying to get  a vote for the people who elected me". Kentucky, the Beautiful.

Mad Senator Paul?  I'm getting used to the idea.

Jon Kyl Returns as a GOP Ill-Humor Man

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl  continues to operate in a parallel universe when he tries to explain complex issues.  For example, Talking Points Memo reports that Kyl  blames President Obama for President Bush's failure to enact the White House's immigration reform bill in 2007.  One problem: As senator, Obama voted for the bill; Kyl  joined the filibuster against it.

Why do I get worked up about his nonsense?   Well,  I must remind myself that Kyl was the pathetic guy  who accused Planned Parenthood of devoting more than 90 pct.. of its activities  to abortions.   When the number splattered in his face (3 pct. is  more like it), a  Kyl spokseman said the senator's  comment was"not intended to be a factual statement".


Bulletin; 
Kyl is now suggesting that Obama should be impeached for his new immigration policy.    How can such a beautiful  state be corrupted by screwies like Kyl and, for that matter, Gov. Jan Brewer? And for that matter, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. And...that's more than  enough already. .

PD's Senate race headlines leave us guessing

IF YOU  HAPPENED to see the Sunday Plain Dealer's letters page you might have  noticed the big headline that needed translation:

 Mandel may sling some mud,  but some of it deserves to stick

Oh? Stick to whom?  Josh Mandel? Or his  opponent, a "deserving" Sen. Sherrod Brown?  Brown  would be a  good guess.  Even the sole italicized  quotation under the heading was drawn from an anti-Brown letter.    (The  eight published letters were evenly balanced pro and con, if you got that far.)

The brouhaha was prompted by an earlier PD editorial  taking issue with Mandel's revival of a generation-old issue that Brown assaulted his former wife - now friendly and raising money for his campaign - during a rancorous divorce proceeding.  The story is hardly new, and even was circulated during the liberal Democrat's  successful 2006 challenge of then-Sen. Mike DeWine, who declined to inject it into the narrative of his own campaign. But you should remember that the same Josh Mandel  raised questions about his African-American opponent in 2010 during the race for Ohio Treasurer, suggesting that the guy was a Muslim.  He wasn't, but why should that be a criterion? Mandel won.

Back to the PD:  The critical editorial lost its edge when the writer  concluded that Mandel was "capable of better".   There's no evidence that he can be - or will be - in his catch-as-catch-can rush to Capitol Hill at age 34.   But the ambiguous headline and the italicized quote  weighed against Brown.

The letters rested above another headline over two other letters  near the bottom of the page that read:

Wisdom of Sen. Brown's pollution vote debated

Once again, it certainly appeared to be a Brown negative.

All of this should be put into the context of the state's corporate media (read: Republican) being  less than thrilled by Brown's friendship with organized labor and opposition to exporting America's jobs.   He's been running uphill against the state's editorial writers for years , the last time in his successful challenge to DeWine, which Brown won in a landslide.

The PD seems a tad frustrated that a young right-wing Republican prospect  like Mandel may be forfeiting any claim to credibility by his nastiness, deceptions and callow game plan toward his current opponent when he is "capable of  better."  Hint, Josh. Hint. There are still more than four months to shape up  for editorial endorsements.  Sunday's fuzzy headlines on the PD's  letters page are  another start.










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Romney: If you can't say something bad, cool it

MITT ROMNEY is having trouble dealing with an economy that is creeping upward.  Down in Florida,  Romney's campaign people have told Republican  Gov. Rick Scott to cool it  on boasting that more people have jobs today in the Sunshine State.  For a candidate for whom good economic news is bad news - at least until after the election - Romney must hope that we'll all be on welfare by November in order to  sell his  vague jobs plan to the voters. Next thing you know, he will ask Republicans to stop buying new cars and  homes until you-know-when.

 His position remains as he stated it during the primaries:

 "Of course the economy is getting  better, but Obama made it worse."

So "worse" in Summit County  that home sales were  up 18.5 pct.  and 19 pct. in Ohio over a year ago. During that period  Akron's unemployment dropped from 9.2 pct. to 7.6 and in the county 8.3 pct. down to 6.6 pct.   Those are figures that Team Romney may prefer to discuss in a quiet room.

And another thing, while we're at it:  Does he really think it will be all that helpful to substitute one word for another to avoid suspicion that there is less in his orations than meets the ear?  His campaign has now banished the use of the word "outsourcing" - a killer thought among people who want to keep the jobs in America.  His euphemism of choice is "offshoring". But that sounds like a better fit for rich investors like Romney who keep their mega-accounts in non-taxed offshore vaults.

Summit GOP: It takes one to know three

The Summit County Republican Party website has a curious  item from the Beacon Journal about a relative of a Democrat who was hired by the county.

The Republicans' spin on it was...well, let me quote the local GOP's hallowed chronicle: :

"Just the latest example of Summit County's elected Democrats handing high-paying government jobs to their relatives and political cronies, regardless of qualifications or anti-nepotism laws.  Even the local newspaper can't cover up that stink bomb.  Outrageous.! "(Bold face and italics as appearing in the original.)

One problem with that.  Actually, three.

Party Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's brother Chris happens to be the bailiff in the Republican-held Summit County Probate Court.  Chris' wife Joan is the bailiff for Republican Common Pleas Judge Alison McCarty. Alex's niece,  Susan Sweeney, is chief deputy of the Barberton
Clerk of Courts.  Only a coincidence?


By the way the website just added a video  of the party's Lincoln Day Dinner in February in which the principal speaker, then- GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum. claimed the Summit County Party as his own.  He mentioned that his strength in his earlier political days was that people didn't take him seriously.

 Sorry, Rick, they still don't.  Still at the conclusion of his address in which he gave a light-hearted account of a dog that peed in his lap during a campaign stop, Santorum  inspired  Arshinkoff to shout, "What a great speech! What a great speech!  We may have a new Ronald Reagan!"

Not yet, Alex.  Not yet.

Democrats leave dinner formalities to Republicans

THE SUMMIT COUNTY DEMOCRATS  met under one roof this week for the party's annual
FDR dinner (Franklin Delano Roosevelt for anyone with a short memory).  The 400 or so who arrived at Todaro's party center early enough for a head start on  wine and buffet nibbles  assembled the party's first team - County Executive Russ Pry, Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic,  chairman Wayne Jones et al - to begin  an evening of Democratic pep talks featuring Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley,  who some folks are already casting as a fellow of great potential.  Say, 2016?

O'Malley, the former Baltimore mayor,  and Plusquellic developed a lasting friendship when the latter served as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.  As Plusquellic told the audience of his friend: "He's qualified to be the president". Say, 2016.

Well,  that's a long way off and the local event served as the platform  for O'Malley to drive home the need to reelect President Obama in November, the governor's current mission as he travels about  to engage new voters and rev up the old ones.

All in all, it was an informal  evening that once again contrasted how Democrats and Republicans go about their business at celebratory occasions in this county.  The Democrats provided a venue for collegial banter, some decent food, a lively speaker, and awards to its workers, all of which took no more than a few hours.   Having attended a score of Republican dinners before new rules barring certain media were exercised, I  can tell you there is a world of difference here.

Republican dinners are pure pageantry: A live band, drumrolls, an off-stage voice calling out the names of each Republican grandee who proceeds to his or her seat on the dais with applause,   and an evening filled out - in recent years, at least -with  prominent ultra-conservative speakers symbolic of the party's servile acquiescence  to the far right.

There also is the customary  bellowing harangue by the County Party chairman, Alex Arshinkoff, with his laundry list of grievances against the Beacon Journal, a former editor, a local law firm and whatever else needs to be aired out for the dinner guests.  Heavens!

Trust me:  Whatever your politics, the Democratic events hereabouts  are always more fun, even without the drumrolls.

Romney's gift at making pie shells

There was a picture in today's USA TODAY  of  one of those made-to-order photo-ops of Mitt Romney  on his campaign tour in Michigan. The sleeves of his white  shirt were rolled up to the elbows  to show that By God he was a regular guy among regular guys and gals  invoved in the common labors of the middle class and below.

The caption said the candidate was kneading dough to make a pie shell.  It was a fitting image of the empty shell his campaign has offered so far.  He has dodged the difficult questions, shifting from one position to another , as the moment dictates, spinning them as he would a pizza crust.  Aside from repeating that he would cut  taxes and create jobs,  he has yet to tell us how he would do this while eliminating the deficit.

 As one who occasionally watches TV 's Cake Boss solve impossible problems with imaginative solutions  (and a lot of icing) I would think Romney might  want to add him to the campaign  to offer  ways to fill the shell.  Or is it no more than a shell game?

(P.S. The headline on the story told us:  Romney mum on unions as he woos Mich. What did I just tell you?)

* * * * *

Speaking of newspapers:  The Plain Dealer  today editorially crtiticized Josh Mandel for being
"stuck on the low road."  That's a reference to Mandel & Friends dragging out the ancient published story of how Sen. Sherrod Brown was the source of domestic violence during his rancorous 1986 divorce.  (No matter now that he and his ex-wife have  remained friends and, indeed, she just  hosted a fund raiser for him. )

But Mandel is an incorrigible brat who raised false Muslim issues against his opponent when he ran for Treasurer. As someone once wrote of the Roman historian Livy's questionable accounts of wars, "He had a taste for truth,  but no passion for  it."

So allow me to quibble  with the PD's optimistic assessment of the Whiz Kid, which asserted :

"Mandel is capable of better".

There's no evidence of  "better" in his mad-dash  political career.  Or was the PD, as the corporate media are quite capable of doing these days,  merely trying to soften the blow?