The Wall

GOP candidate: I can't rule out violence
Texan Stephen Broden says there needs to be a change at the top
By MELANIE MASON Dallas Morning News
Oct. 22, 2010, 9:49AM
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WASHINGTON – Republican congressional candidate Stephen Broden stunned his party Thursday, saying he would not rule out violent overthrow of the government if elections did not produce a change in leadership.

In a rambling exchange during a TV interview, Broden, a South Dallas pastor, said a violent uprising "is not the first option," but it is "on the table." That drew a quick denunciation from the head of the Dallas County GOP, who called the remarks "inappropriate."

Broden, a first-time candidate, is challenging veteran incumbent Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in Dallas' heavily Democratic 30th Congressional District. Johnson's campaign declined to comment on Broden.

In the interview, Brad Watson, political reporter for WFAA-TV (Channel 8), asked Broden about a tea party event last year in Fort Worth in which he described the nation's government as tyrannical.

"We have a constitutional remedy," Broden said then. "And the Framers say if that don't work, revolution."

Watson asked if his definition of revolution included violent overthrow of the government. In a prolonged back-and-forth, Broden at first declined to explicitly address insurrection, saying the first way to deal with a repressive government is to "alter it or abolish it."

"If the government is not producing the results or has become destructive to the ends of our liberties, we have a right to get rid of that government and to get rid of it by any means necessary," Broden said, adding the nation was founded on a violent revolt against Britain's King George III.

Watson asked if violence would be in option in 2010, under the current government.

"The option is on the table. I don't think that we should remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms," Broden said, without elaborating. "However, it is not the first option."

Jonathan Neerman, head of the Dallas County Republican Party, said he's never heard Broden or other local Republican candidates advocate violence against the government.

"It is a disappointing, isolated incident," Neerman said. He said he plans to discuss the matter with Broden's campaign.

Ken Emanuelson, a Broden supporter and leading tea party organizer in Dallas, said he did not disagree with the "philosophical point" that people had the right to resist a tyrannical government.

But, he said, "Do I see our government today anywhere close to that point? No, I don't."

Emanuelson said he's occasionally heard people call for direct action against the government, but that they typically do not get involved in electoral politics.

That Broden is "engaged in the election and running for office shows he's got faith in the system as it is," Emanuelson said.

Also in the interview, Broden backed away from other controversial statements he has made at rallies and on cable news appearances.

In June 2009, he described the economic crash in the housing, banking and automotive industries as "contrived" and a "set up" by the Obama administration.

Asked Thursday about the validity of these, Broden said they were "authentic crises facing this nation."

Broden also retreated from other remarks last year that chided Americans for not being more outraged over government intrusion, comparing them to Jews "walking into the furnaces" under the Nazi regime in Germany.

"They are our enemies, and we must resist them," he said of government leaders.

Broden said Thursday that he wasn't trying to compare President Barack Obama to Hitler and he mistakenly linked the U.S. in 2010 to Nazi Germany.

In the uphill campaign against Johnson, Broden has sought to capitalize on her misuse of scholarship funds from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a nonprofit entity.

In late August, The Dallas Morning News reported that Johnson provided 23 scholarships over five years to two of her grandsons, two children of her nephew, and two children of her top aide in Dallas. None of those recipients were eligible under the foundation's anti-nepotism rules or residency requirements. She has repaid the foundation more than $31,000.

By Thomas Francis, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
TAMPA (2010-10-18) - On the same morning in February 2009 that President Barack Obama promoted the federal economic stimulus plan in Fort Myers, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, a Republican from Lee County, appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to criticize that same legislation.

In a letter to Obama that was read on the cable news channel, Mack described the bill as being full of “earmarks, pork-driven projects and liberal-spending programs.”

Other Florida Republicans, who warned that the stimulus plan was part of a tax-and-spend culture in Washington, D.C., that would bankrupt the nation, shared Mack’s view. They cited that belief in casting votes against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in January 2009.

But seven months later, Mack wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation asking for $29 million in stimulus funds to improve railroad infrastructure in his district.

Through a spokesperson, Mack defended his apparent double standard on stimulus spending.

“Congressman Mack will always fight for his district’s growing infrastructure needs,” said Stephanie DuBois, Mack’s press secretary. “Unfortunately, the stimulus plan fell well short of stimulating anything other than big government.”

Mack’s attempt to steer stimulus money to his district has become known on Capitol Hill as “lettermarking” — a process similar to earmarking but regarded by government watchdogs as an even less transparent tool for winning federal funds for pet projects.

Based on a review of records by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization in Washington D.C., and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, Republicans from throughout the Sunshine State pushed to steer millions of stimulus dollars to their districts despite having joined Mack’s public outcry against federal spending.

In interviews with FCIR, these Republicans said it’s their duty to win constituents’ share of federal spending, even if they disagree with that federal spending.

While Obama and the Democratic Party promised transparency in the $787 billion stimulus bill, Democrats in Congress also participated in lettermarking.

Bureaucrats in Washington have final say on where federal stimulus money is spent, and it’s unclear how many lettermarked projects were funded or will be funded in Florida. Nonetheless, Republicans and Democrats alike used lettermarking as a way to influence the outflow of stimulus money.

U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis

In late January 2009, U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, told a Tampa Bay area cable news channel that the stimulus bill was “a lot of pork,” but in September of that year, he asked for a piece — $16 million in highway funds to widen Tampa’s Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in his district.
Bilirakis did not respond to requests for comment.

U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Jacksonville, was among Florida’s lettermarking lawmakers. In January 2009, Crenshaw said his vote against the stimulus was “a vote against debt and big government.”

Yet, in October of that year, he authored letters asking the administration to use stimulus dollars to fund two major transportation projects in his district.

In an e-mailed statement, Crenshaw asserted that he “consistently voted against bloated spending packages.” But he added: “Jacksonville should have every possible opportunity to access available federal dollars, just like every other metropolitan region in the nation, even if I opposed the stimulus funding measure.”

Three Miami Republicans — U.S. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen — criticized the scope of the stimulus package, but they banded together in September 2009 by signing a letter that requested $106 million in stimulus funds for a project to improve Miami’s NW 25th Street Viaduct.

Joining those three Republicans were Democrats Wasserman Schultz and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami, the Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. Senate. Since Democrats promised transparency in the stimulus bill, lettermarking could be viewed as a violation of that promise.

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam

In a January 2009 statement, U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, expressed disgust for what he called a “pork-laden pie,” only to request part of that pie in August 2009 for a biorefinery project at his alma mater, the University of Florida.

Putnam, who is running for commissioner of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, e-mailed a statement to reconcile his opposition to the stimulus with his advocacy for the biorefinery project: “Even if you lose a vote on the floor of the House and a measure you oppose becomes law, a congressman has a responsibility to remain engaged in the process. If you believe a law is bad, then it is your responsibility to work to make it less bad.”

U.S. Sen. George LeMieux

U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, a Republican, did not cast a vote on the stimulus bill because he didn’t join Congress until Gov. Charlie Crist appointed him in fall 2009 to replace retiring Sen. Mel Martinez. But LeMieux soon established himself as one of the GOP’s most forceful critics of big government.

On Oct. 21, 2009, LeMieux devoted his first speech as senator to what he called “our nation’s spending problem,” which he described as “out of control” and “unsustainable.”

LeMieux did not mention that on the day before his speech, he had written a letter to the Transportation Department in which he asked for more than $65 million for a bus and train center in Jacksonville.

During the same period, LeMieux, who said he would have voted against the federal stimulus package, was fighting for billions in federal funding for the construction of a high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando.

On Nov. 6, 2009, in another speech before the Senate, LeMieux again scolded Congress for its spendthrift ways. “Both sides of the aisle talk about fiscal restraint and fiscal discipline,” he said. “Yet we keep spending more than we have.”

But 11 days later, LeMieux sent a letter to Transportation Department officials asking that they award stimulus funds to Charlotte County’s Gateway Harbor Walk.

Challenged to reconcile LeMieux’s opposition to federal spending with his aggressive pursuit of federal funds, the senator’s spokesperson, Jessica Garcia, said: “The difference is between fighting to prevent the spending in the first place and advocating for your state’s fair share once the money is sent out of Washington. There is no question government needs to rein in spending, but if Florida’s families are upset about the stimulus, think how they would feel if all the money was spent elsewhere.”

After Obama signed the stimulus bill into law on Feb. 17, 2009, the power to select recipients of stimulus funds shifted to federal agencies, which is why these agencies were deluged with lettermarking requests from members of Congress.

Even politicians who criticized lettermarking participated in the process.

But in September 2009, eight months after the stimulus vote, the Ocala Republican wrote a letter to Transportation Department officials requesting $79 million in stimulus money for a project to improve infrastructure of a port in Jacksonville.

In November of that year, Stearns composed a letter asking the same officials to fund a project at Jacksonville International Airport, in addition to another letter on behalf of Gainesville officials seeking recovery funds for road projects.

Stearns’ congressional office did not respond to requests for comment.

“I think it’s disingenuous to argue against the stimulus on one hand and then to ask for those funds in the next breath,” said Doug Guetzloe, the chief strategist for the Florida Tea Party, which has registered as a political party. “I think this is a problem that Congress has and that it’s the reason its approval ratings are so low — there is so much duplicity.”

U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fort Walton Beach, eviscerated the stimulus proposal in January 2009. “The leadership of Congress is out of touch and intoxicated by their power, and it intends to bankrupt the country by funding programs no one needs,” he said in a statement after the legislation passed the House.

Months later, Miller struck a more solicitous tone in letters to Transportation Department officials. He asked that they use millions in stimulus dollars to fund 10 separate projects in his Panhandle district, including hundreds of miles of improvements to roads and the replacement of more than 100 bridges.

In yet another example, U.S. Reps. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores, John Mica, R-Winter Park, and Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, voted against the stimulus. But all three wrote letters to the Transportation Department seeking stimulus funds for favored projects.

Advocacy groups such as the Alexandria, Va.-based National Taxpayers Union have heard this political song before. Pete Sepp, a spokesperson for the union, said lettermarking is just a new spin on the earmarking debate.

“It’s a more polite form of pork-barreling,” said Sepp, who believes the same kinds of public disclosures that occurred in recent years with earmarks should be applied to lettermarking.

“Lawmakers are entitled to write the letters, but the taxpaying public is entitled to see them much more widely than they do.”

Fascinating stuff, EB . . . i'm glad you posted it.

Obama is the president. I know he is.

jebus wubs you, this you know

cause the bobble tells you so

don't believe everything, hell don't believe anything is my motto

interesting reads

Take your thumb out of your mouth and reinsert it into your rectum.

I boldly stole this post off of PDiddie's blog.

Via Palingates, the ThinkProgress reveal:


In 2006, Koch Industries owner Charles Koch revealed to the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore that he coordinates the funding of the conservative infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think tanks, media outlets and other anti-government efforts through a twice annual meeting of wealthy right-wing donors. He also confided to Moore, who is funded through several of Koch’s ventures, that his true goal is to strengthen the “culture of prosperity” by eliminating “90%” of all laws and government regulations.

Ninety percent of all? Hmmm.


ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry — from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons — working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012. According to the memo, David Chavern, the number two at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck also met with these representatives of the corporate elite. In an election season with the most undisclosed secret corporate giving since the Watergate-era, the memo sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between extremely profitable, multi-billion dollar corporations and much of the conservative infrastructure. The memo describes the prospective corporate donors as “investors,” and it makes clear that many of the Republican operatives managing shadowy, undisclosed fronts running attack ads against Democrats were involved in the Koch’s election-planning event ...

More from Salon:


According to that document, the Palm Springs meeting attracted such corporate and financial titans as Stephen Schwartzman of the Blackstone Group, Philip Anschutz of Anschutz Industries, and Steve Bechtel of Bechtel Corp., as well as representatives of Bank of America, Allied Capital, Citadel Investment, among many others – all of whom gathered to learn how to “elect leaders who are more strongly committed to liberty and prosperity” with a “strategic plan to educate voters on the importance of economic freedom.”

More from HuffPo:


(T)he New York Times reported that an upcoming meeting in Palm Springs of "a secretive network of Republican donors" that was being organized by Koch Industries, "the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes." Buried in the third to last graph was a note that previous guests at such meetings included Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two of the more conservative members of the bench.

And from that article in the NYT, more on the inclusion of Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Scalia in the conspiracy:


To encourage new participants, Mr. Koch offers to waive the $1,500 registration fee. And he notes that previous guests have included Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, Gov. Haley Barbour and Gov. Bobby Jindal, Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, and Representatives Mike Pence, Tom Price and Paul D. Ryan.

Of course "some say" there is nothing wrong with this sort of thing at all. Nothing illegal or unethical at all about people with similar interests gathering together to discuss ways to affect political change.

Why it's the same thing as when, say, the Harris County Democrats have a rally over a dinner, or a blockwalk followed by a fish fry. Except without the Supreme Court justices or the captains of industry. Or their money.

Some words from GW Bush this weekend:

Bush said he sat in the White House with his economic advisors Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke three weeks into the economic downturn.

He said Bernanke told him, “If you don't do something significant, you're likely to see a depression greater than the Great Depression.”

“Depression, no depression,” Bush said. “It wasn't that hard for me, just so you know. I made the decision to use your money to prevent the collapse from happening.”

yes well you would appear to be against the wall

can you climb

dismantling smacks of jetsam

Washington (CNN) -- After NPR fired analyst Juan Williams, Sen. Jim DeMint sent this tweet to his Twitter followers:

"The incident with Juan Williams reminds us the only free speech liberals support is the speech with which they agree."

Maybe so. But if DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, meant to imply that conservatives have a better record, then I have two words to say to him: Brink Lindsey.

Brink Lindsey is not a household name outside the Beltway, but inside he's a well-known writer and thinker. After a successful career as an international trade lawyer, Lindsey was hired by the libertarian Cato Institute. At Cato, Lindsey studied trade issues, wrote two widely praised books, and launched the institute's influential web magazine http://www.cato-unbound.org He was promoted to Cato's vice president for research.

"Libertarianism" is a philosophy of personal freedom that fits awkwardly within the American party system. Yet by and large libertarians have tended to align themselves within the Republican political coalition. Certainly Brink aligned himself that way through most of his adult life: I know, because he and I have been friends since we attended law school together back in the 1980s.

Brink initially supported the Iraq war. But as the war soured, Brink soured on the leaders who had waged that war. Brink began to argue that libertarians might find more natural partners in the Democratic than the Republican party. So long as George W. Bush remained president, Brink's Cato colleagues remained open to Brink's anti-Republican views. Lindsey received funding to start a private series of discussions to explore liberal-libertarian commonalities. (Disclosure: Although neither a liberal nor a libertarian, I attended one of these discussion sessions).
All proceeded in a thoughtful think-tank way until the election of Barack Obama in November 2008.



For libertarians and their donors, the election of Obama threw open all the terror of the advent of the apocalypse. Discuss ideas over dinner with Obama supporters? You might as well break bread with emissaries of Satan.

As with Juan Williams, there came with Brink a straw that broke the camel's back:

Lindsey published a negative review of a new book by Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks argued that America was riven by a radical culture war, with 30 percent of the country manipulating democratic institutions to impose European-style social democracy on an unwilling 70 percent majority.

Writing in the liberal (uh oh) American Prospect in July, Lindsey argued:

"Figuring out how to restore growth and how to construct an effective but affordable safety net, are questions for debate, analysis, and democratic decision-making. My answers to those questions may differ from yours, but dividing up into warring tribes and demonizing each other aren't the ways to figure out who's right."

Shortly after that article appeared, Lindsey was fired along with a more junior Cato associate with whom Lindsey was co-authoring a book, Will Wilkinson (now a blogger at the Economist).

Neither Lindsey nor Cato have any comment on the separation, but see here for my reporting soon after the event.

The Lindsey-Wilkinson firing touched off no Fox News explosion. No bold assertion of the principle of freedom of expression: only a little murmuring among Washington policy elites.

Among the right-wing of that policy elite, the murmuring was especially nervous. The Lindsey-Wilkinson firing followed my own termination from the American Enterprise Institute in March, after I posted a blog item lamenting that Republicans had thrown away an opportunity to negotiate a health care deal in order to inflict a personal defeat on the president. Which termination in turn followed the firing of Bruce Bartlett from a Dallas-based conservative think tank after a book criticizing the Bush administration for overspending.

Sometime before these events, a young Cato Institute blogger named Julian Sanchez proposed the term "epistemic closure" to describe what was happening in the conservative world. That's a fancy way of saying that minds are closed to contradictory information.

And one demonstration of how minds are closed? The ability to raise a howl about liberal close-mindedness after the firing of Juan Williams -- without recalling one's own side's exactly comparable actions not even 90 days ago.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum.

The problem wasn't the invisible fence. The problem was trying to get everyone in Mexico to wear those electronic shock collars.

Republican Party leaders in central Illinois are calling on their own candidate for state senate to step down following racist remarks he made at a candidate's forum last week.

Al Reynolds, who is considered the Tea Party candidate in Illinois' 52nd District, has been unavailable to the media since saying that African American men preferred dealing drugs to going to college, because it is "easier."

"I've been in the city and the dichotomy of the women and the men in the minorities, there is a difference in the fact that most minority women, either the single parent or coming from a poor neighborhood, are motivated more so than the minority men," Reynolds said, when asked what he would do to increase diversity at state colleges. "And it's a pretty good reason. Most of the women who are single parents have to find work to support their family. The minority men find it more lucrative to be able to do drugs or other avenues rather than do education. It's easier."

The room was silent as Reynolds made his remarks. (Video below) He continued:

"We need to provide ways that are more incentive, other than just sports avenues, for the men for the minorities to want to go to college and get an education and better themselves before the women have to support them all."

The comments were made at a forum co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Champaign County NAACP, according to the News-Gazette of East Central Illinois.

Yay, I like to read about the scum of the earth, the far right! May they all die and find out firsthand just how bad the hell most of them believe in really is!