Lately, we've seen a lot of press about Obama making inroads in traditionally Republican areas, perhaps none more intriguingly than Nebraska's second congressional district, comprised of Omaha and its suburbs. I grew up in outstate Nebraska (not far from where Children of the Corn was filmed, to give you an idea) and while I'm proud to say the state is no Kansas, with its anti-abortion billboards and evolution-denying school boards, it's still incredibly hostile territory for national Democrats. However, I just got back from a quick trip to see family in Omaha, and without even trying, I ran across ample evidence that my home state may be ready for change, in Gotham bold.

[Read more]

• Print
• Email
• Tweet

This is heartening — anti-Islamic bigots at a McCain rally on Saturday were confronted by other attendees and actually sent packing.

A couple points: (1) I hope we seen a post-election rehabilitation of the image of Muslims in America. It's sorely needed. Colin Powell is already helping. (2) There is a war currently ongoing for the soul of the Republican Party. On the one hand you've got the folks in this video who decry racism, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. On the other hand you've got folks like the the man below and the party leaders who seek to exploit him. The positions the party takes on any number of issues — including military detainees, civil liberties, hate crime legislation, gay marriage, and immigration — depend on which kind of GOP voter wins this battle.

Frankly, I wish the nativists all the luck in the world. Their ascent in the Republican Party will only lead to its increased marginalization in a changing world.

• Print
• Email
• Tweet

On October 29, 1991, Senator John McCain went to the floor of the US Senate. The former Navy pilot was angry and disgusted. In recent days, the news had broken that the previous month Navy airmen and others had gone wild—engaging in sexual molestation, out-of-control drinking, and other misconduct—at the Tailhook Association convention in Las Vegas, an annual gathering of retired and active-duty naval aviators. "I cannot tell you," McCain proclaimed, "the distaste and displeasure that I have as a naval aviator…concerning this incident." He bemoaned the fact that senior ranking naval officers and civilian leaders had been at the meeting. He called for an investigation and urged the Navy to suspend its traditional participation with the Tailhook reunions. "There is no time in the history of this country that something like this is more inappropriate," McCain said, "and we cannot allow it. It is unconscionable. And we in the military...should be ashamed and embarrassed...that this kind of activity went on. And there is no excuse for it."

Now, McCain has placed one of the men responsible for permitting—and encouraging-- loutish activity at the Tailhook meetings in a powerful position: heading up his transition team.

McCain recently named John Lehman to oversee his transition effort and figure out how a McCain administration ought to get started—and whom it ought to hire for the most senior jobs—should McCain win the November 4 election. Lehman, now an investment banker, was secretary of the Navy during the 1980s, and he played a R-rated role in the Tailhook scandal.

Lehman was no longer Navy secretary when the Tailhook scandal exploded. But in 1991 and 1992, as military investigators and journalists probed what had happened at the 1991 convention—which included the so-called Gauntlet, a line of rowdy and drunk junior officers who harassed and assaulted women passing by--they learned that the events at the Tailhook convention of 1991 were predated by similar behavior in early years. And they discovered that Lehman, as Navy secretary, had been an enthusiastic participant.

In his 1995 book, Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy, Greg Vistica, the San Diego Union-Tribune reporter who broke the Tailhook scandal, described a scene from the 1986 Tailhook meeting:

When the door to the suite at the Las Vegas Hilton opened, a prominent member of President Ronald Reagan's administration and a naked woman were clearly visible. He was lying on his back, stretched out in front of a throng of naval officers. There were probably one hundred men watching him, laughing with him….

[Read more]

• Print
• Email
• Tweet

Make no mistake: At this point, it's clear that the voter fraud chimera, and its potential to keep thousands or millions of Obama voters out of the final count, is becoming the central Republican strategy for winning this election. The party doubts it can win if every legitimate vote is counted, so they aim to make sure that some of them aren't. False allegations of voter fraud, which can serve to both intimidate voters and challenge ballots, is their means to this end.

As David Corn wrote last week, the right's "desperation is showing" as they scramble to reverse John McCain's free-fall by smearing Barack Obama with every scary label they can find. (As David summarized it: "Obama is a Black Muslim, Anti-Christian Socialist Plotting with an Evil Jewish Billionaire.") But in case this fails to frighten off enough voters to close Obama's lead, vote suppression is the Republicans' last-ditch tactic for snatching a tainted victory from the jaws of defeat.

This is a strategy that's been developing for years within the Republican Party. But it's really taken off during the Bush administration—maybe because W (or, more likely, Dick Cheney) remained conscious that he only got into the White House through vote suppression, and could only stay there through more vote suppression. The administration's zeal to advance the myth of voter fraud was key to what has become one of its biggest scandals: the politically motivated firings of nine U.S. attorneys by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2006.

[Read more]

• Print
• Email
• Tweet