A New York congressman who resigned under an ethics cloud has been under investigation for allegedly groping multiple male aides, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
AP – President Barack Obama’s health care bill would change federal policy on abortion, but it would not open the spigot of taxpayer dollars as some abortion opponents fear.
AP – Former New York Congressman Eric Massa says he groped a staffer but denies it was sexual. Massa’s comments came Tuesday on conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s Fox News Channel show.
AP – U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama’s State of the Union address was “very troubling” and the annual speech has “degenerated to a political pep rally.”
Legislation to give additional months of unemployment benefits to people who have been out of a job for more than half a year cleared a key hurdle Tuesday that guarantees it will soon pass the Senate.
AP – Legislation to give additional months of unemployment benefits to people who have been out of a job for more than half a year cleared a key hurdle Tuesday that guarantees it will soon pass the Senate.
AP – Americans and their lawmakers are dramatically out of sync on health care, with large majorities of people looking for bipartisan cooperation that’s nowhere in sight.
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The top conservative activist on the powerful Texas Board of Education, who rejects evolution and has pushed for a revisionist right-wing U.S. history curriculum, is on the way out, after a moderate candidate defeated him in a tight primary last week.
For months now, TPMmuckraker has been covering Don McLeroy as a major player in the battle over the drafting of nationally influential history textbook standards by the Texas board.
Lobbyist Thomas Ratliff edged out McLeroy 50.4%-49.6% in a GOP primary for the seat McLeroy has held since 1999.
Close as it was, Ratliff’s win is significant because he represented a clear alternative to McLeroy, and he pulled through in a deeply conservative district. McLeroy’s home county went 64-35 for McCain in ‘08, and no Democrat is even running for the board seat.
Ratliff is younger, moderate, and emphasized listening “to teachers and superintendents in determining what students should know,” according to the endorsement column of the Dallas Morning News.
How bad was McLeroy?
- In 2008, he objected to including Chinese literature in English classes: “[Y]ou really don’t want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child’s time trying to learn a word that they’ll never ever use again?” He conceded some terms, such as “chow mein,” might be useful, the San Antonio Express-News reported.
- He said during a 2008 debate over science standards: “Is understanding of evolution ‘vital’ to the understanding of biology? No.”
- Last year he instructed curriculum writers to “read the latest on [Joseph] McCarthy — he was basically vindicated.”
- He described his textbook evaluation process this way to the Washington Monthly: “The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan–he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.” [...]
- Finally, McLeroy successfully offered an amendment to U.S. history standards to require students to be able to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.” There is no liberal counterpart clause in the current draft of the standards.
This guy was a full-fledged member of the American Taliban (and certainly made my forthcoming book titled, fittingly, American Taliban). His ouster, however narrow, suggests that there are still enough Republicans uncomfortable with this kind of theocratic agenda. Still, I don’t doubt that given the dearth of hotly contested Democratic races in the primary, that challenger Ratliffe wasn’t boosted by crossover Democratic and independent support in this open primary. Clearly, there was no margin to spare.
Every once in a while, I’m right about something. Me, on :
With 14 months until the Florida Republican Senate primary in 2010, popular Gov. Charlie Crist is riding high in the polls against his challenger, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio. But the current numbers are deceiving, and as counterintuitive as it might seem, Crist is likely the underdog.
You see, Crist is an anachronism in the modern GOP. He’s a moderate with a streak of social liberalism, which places him at odds with the conservative voters who will dominate the closed primary’s electorate. Crist’s strong support among Democrats and independents won’t help him with party regulars, while his centrist record will provide ample fodder for Rubio and his allies to decimate the governor’s standing with the right-wing base [...]
This is a war of attrition, and 14 months will be more than enough for the combined might of the conservative movement to grind Crist down. Republican primary voters aren’t interested in moderation or practicality, and Crist can’t deliver the ideological purity they demand. The poll numbers should tighten by the first quarter of 2010, and Crist seems likely to face the same dilemma that Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) wrestled with a short while ago — can he remain a Republican and win a primary?
Note, this was crazy talk when I wrote it last summer. As late as October 2009, Crist was safely . But the dynamics of the race were obvious, they just needed to play out.
Still, it turns out I wasn’t 100 percent right. I expected tied poll numbers at this stage of the game, not :
Rubio now leads Crist 60-28, including a staggering 71-17 lead with conservatives. Crist has a 49-36 advantage with party moderates, but they account for just 31% of likely primary voters compared to 65% who describe themselves as conservative.
Rubio is benefiting from a widely held sentiment among Florida GOP voters that Congressional Republicans are too liberal and that Crist would add to the problem. 41% of them think that the party leadership in Washington is too liberal, and with those folks Rubio holds an 83-10 lead. 50% think that Crist himself is too liberal and with those voters Rubio’s advantage expands even wider to 90-5.
Nate Silver offers four options for Crist, and determines that is his best option. But Nate inexplicably leaves off Crist’s most obvious option: become a Democrat.
Our general election Senate numbers, which we’ll release tomorrow, find that Crist is a good deal more popular with Democrats now than he is with Republicans. His path to any future electoral victory may come as an independent or perhaps even as a Democrat.
I’ve written it before, I’ll write it again: there are only two candidates who can win that Senate seat in November — Rubio and Crist. And Crist won’t do it as a Republican. As a Democrat, he has a fighting chance.
AP – The Navy says that three dogs died and dozens more were in poor health after being neglected by a private security contractor in Chicago that had been hired to train the dogs to detect explosives.