Who’s doing PR for Sinn Fein? They should be, um, fired!

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Quick, somebody get some PR help to Sinn Fein, right now. First the IRA, its armed wing (and fallback/bargaining chip in extremis), brutally murders a guy, Robert McCartney, in a bar. Then, in what was intended as a sweet goodwill gesture toward the man’s family, it offers to brutally murder the murderers! (And deliver them, gift-wrapped, to the McCartney household, one wonders?).

Now along comes Martin McGuiness, Sinn Fein’s number two, and himself a former IRA man, to warn the McCarntey sisters, who have mounted a stunningly effective shame campaign against “the Ra” and Sinn Fein, essentially to back off. Think about it: how do these words sound, coming from a former high-ranking IRA soldier whose political party is still backed by the IRA’s (famously un-decomissioned) guns: “The McCartneys need to be very careful. To step over that line, which is a very important line, into the world of party political politics, can do a huge disservice to their campaign.” To which I’d reply, Or what, Martin?

This would all be comical if it weren’t so disgusting. One bright spot, though — and I say this as both a Brit who grew up in the bomb-happy 1980s and a longtime sympathiser, within limits, with the Republican cause — is that it makes Sinn Fein’s cynical use of the IRA virtually untenable — Bush is absolutely right to
revoke Gerry Adams’ standing invitation to Washington — and shows, if anyone doubted it, that the IRA has devolved irretrievably into a criminal gang.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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