Tim Murphy

Reporter

Tim Murphy is a reporter in MoJo's DC bureau. Last summer he logged 22,000 miles while blogging about his cross-country road trip for Mother Jones. His writing has been featured in Slate and the Washington Monthly. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

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California's Jack Bauer Candidate

—By Tim Murphy

| Thu May. 27, 2010 4:59 PM PDT

With California's Republican Senate primary less than three weeks away, the candidates are starting to make their closing arguments: former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says she's the most electable; former Rep. Tom Campbell says, no, he's the most electable; and insurgent candidate Chuck DeVore wants voters to know that he, more than any other candidate, is the most qualified to impale a terrorist with a pair of scissors and find out where the bomb is. Hey, the Senate's a wild place!

Earlier this week, DeVore debuted a 24-style online ad, which runs through his national-security resume: Working in Afghanistan in the 1980s (Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a former mujahid, is a supporter), fact-finding missions to the Middle East, lengthy military service, and fancy-sounding quasi-covert operations he helped plan. Take a look:

That comes just one week after DeVore's campaign released decades-old audio of the candidate being shot at during a trip to Lebanon, after the Los Angeles Times suggested he was being something less than truthful about the incident. The recent lurch into Tom Clancy territory shouldn't come as much of a surprise, though: DeVore enjoys military-strategy computer games, and in 1996 he co-wrote a novel, China Attacks, in which an imperialist Chinese bureaucrat sparks World War III. Yikes! I spoke with DeVore last month for a story I'm working on about the race, and somewhat unrelated to the story, I asked him about his book...which now seems strangely relevant.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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Music Monday: Repelling a British Invasion—With Legos

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon May. 24, 2010 9:56 AM PDT

Yes, this is a music post, but first, a related diversion: For most of the past week, MoJo's Mac McClelland has been reporting from the Louisiana coast, where blobs of crude roughly the size of Ruth Bader Ginsburg have begun washing ashore, courtesy of British Petroleum. You should follow Mac on Twitter, but the short story is this: BP—the foreign corporation which has now unleashed as yet incalculable damage on the economy and ecosystem of the Gulf Coast—has essentially taken over the town of Grand Isle, setting up checkpoints and restricting reporters' access to [petroleum-soaked] public beaches. (They've also, apparently, been telling the locals that the crude blobs were really just big clumps of mud). You don't have to be an ophthalmologist to be a little uneasy with that situation.

All of which brought to mind the last time a band of Britons attempted to occupy a slice of Louisiana: The 1815 Battle of New Orleans, in which a scrappy All-American cast of militia, Choctaw Indians, and local pirates (!!) trounced a 10,000-strong British invasion force a few miles outside the city. If it weren't for the muskets, it'd basically be the plot of every Disney movie in the last 15 years. The parallel to today is admittedly rather thin, but the event did lead to one of the great folk song successes in American history, "The Battle of New Orleans," which improbably shot to near the top of the Billboard Charts in 1959. It's not entirely clear why the song would take off at such a random point in time; it'd be a bit like if Lil Wayne composed a song about the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine. But it was recorded, and it did take off. Then Johnny Cash recorded a cover of it, which is awesome. So did Dolly Parton, which is less so.

Anyways, someone on the Internet has taken the time to produce this stop-motion music video, reenacting the battle using Legos, and set to the tune of Johnny Horton's original soundtrack. It's kind of great. My only quibble is that, given the abundance of terrifying swamp monsters from Louisiana they could have chosen, why'd they pick the non-native war elephant (1:53)? Was that a metaphor? Have at it in the comments.

Texas Ed. Board Updates Curriculum: Thomas Jefferson's Back!

—By Tim Murphy

| Fri May. 21, 2010 5:26 PM PDT

It's been a little more than two months since we last told you about the Texas State Board of Education's efforts to rewrite American history. After adding Phyllis Schafly and Newt Gingrich to the curriculum and deemphasizing the Civil Rights movement, the SBOE convened for its final meetings of the year this weeek —and since several of the Board's most conservative members are either not running for reelection or lost primary challenges, it amounts to something of a last hurrah; think the '97 Bulls meets the Christian Coalition.

So how'd it go? Depends on how you feel about our commander in chief's middle name, I guess. In one of the punchiest discussions of the week, Board members shot down an amendment late last night that would have revised the discussion of our first black president to refer to "Barack Hussein Obama." The Texas Tribune's Brian Thevenot, who sat through the proceedings so we didn't have to, captured the full exchange:

[Board member David Bradley] sprang into action. "I'd like to make a motion to insert his middle name, Hussein," he said. Asked why—it was the first time any discussion of any of official's middle name had come up—Bradley played dumb. "He's the president of the United States, and I think we should give him the honor and privilege of his full name"...Some other members were dumbfounded: The Arabic sounding name has been widely used as an epithet in conservative circles and is closely tied to the contention that Obama isn't an American citizen. "I think it's pretty obvious what you're trying to do," said [Board member Bob Craig]. "And I don't think it's correct that we've used the middle names for other presidents." (That was true, [the chairwoman] confirmed shortly later; the board follows whatever style a particular president prefers for his name.)

The amendment was ultimately tabled, but it serves as a pretty good case study for how the nation's most influential school board conducts its business.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

"We Are The World" (Tea Party Edition)

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon May. 10, 2010 10:43 AM PDT

Last month Mother Jones spoke with Lloyd Marcus, the black Tea Party musician who's come to enjoy rock-star status at Tea Party rallies, thanks to hits like "Twenty Ten" and "We the People." We had a nice conversation, but one thing I somehow neglected to ask him was whether he had any plans, in the near future, to put together a charity album modeled on 1980s pop ballads like "We Are the World" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?" Now we have our answer:

In an event that's one part "American Idol" audition and one part "We Are The World" recording session, conservative singer-songwriter Lloyd Marcus is planning to bring together the musical voices of Tea Partiers from across the country to sing the movement's unofficial anthem, "Take Back America," on a charity album to benefit the families of soldiers.

Marcus says he's hoping to get big shots like SNL star Victoria Jackson and Time contributor Ted Nugent on board, which, if Nugent and Jackson's recent appearances are any indication, should turn out swimmingly. But this is mostly about the little guys, like the mostly unknown artists we featured here back in March.

Anyway, because it's Monday, here's a clip of Michael Jackson and Tipper Gore singing "We Are the World" together on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Simpler times:

Obama Endorses "Los Suns"

—By Tim Murphy

| Wed May. 5, 2010 5:00 PM PDT

It's not quite on par with the Iranian soccer team's protest of disputed 2009 election results, but this (via Kevin Drum) is pretty darn cool: The NBA's Phoenix Suns are staging an on-court protest for tonight's home playoff game to show their displeasure with their state's insane new immigration law. As The Nation's Dave Zirin reports, the Suns will alter their jerseys to become "Los Suns" for their televised second-round matchup with the San Antonio Spurs:

In a statement released by the team, Sarver said, "The frustration with the federal government's failure to deal with the issue of illegal immigration resulted in passage of a flawed state law. However intended, the result of passing this law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question, and Arizona's already struggling economy will suffer even further setbacks at a time when the state can ill-afford them."

Or maybe they were just tired of being bombarded with signs like this. The Sun aren't acting alone, either. Spurs coach Greg Popovich said his players support their opponents' efforts—in fact, they would have played as "Los Spurs" but weren't able to get the custom jerseys made in time. President Obama, who has soundly denounced Arizona's new immigration law, gave a shout-out to the team's protest in his Cinco de Mayo address, telling his audience, "I know that a lot of you would rather be watching tonight's game—the Spurs against 'Los Suns' from Phoenix." Meanwhile, the Major League Baseball Players Association has already denounced the law, and and there's an ongoing campaign to prevent the Diamondbacks from hosting the All-Star game as scheduled in 2011.

But not everyone in sports is unified in opposition. Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson told ESPN.com, "Am I crazy, or am I the only one that heard [the legislature] say ‘we just took the United States immigration law and adapted it to our state":

I don't think teams should get involved in the political stuff. And I think this one's still kind of coming out to balance as to how it's going to be favorably looked upon by our public. If I heard it right the American people are really for stronger immigration laws, if I'm not mistaken. Where we stand as basketball teams, we should let that kind of play out and let the political end of that go where it's going to go.