Diane Hendricks: Can we talk just for two seconds before we get up there?
Scott Walker: Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
Hendricks: - some issues we're just going to avoid a little bit. And by the way, this is Brad and he is part of Rock County 5.0 and he has been filming everything.
Brad Lichtenstein: I've been doing a documentary -
Walker: Oh, cool.
Hendricks: - so what we're going to do and talk about right now is just concerns that Mary (Willmer-Sheedy) and I have that we probably, are a little controversial to bring up upstairs. OK? I don't want to - because there's press up there.
Walker: OK, sure.
Lichtenstein: Just so you know, nothing I do is going to see the light of day for over another year.
Hendricks: "Any chance we'll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions -"
Walker: "Oh, yeah."
Hendricks: "- and become a right-to-work? What can we do to help you?"
Walker: "Well, we're going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we're going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer."
* - by poor I'm referring to the gaping hole in her soul that she thought would be filled by uncountable and unspendable wealth.
Hendricks, whose net worth Forbes Magazine estimates to be $2.8 billion, has a strong history of supporting conservative causes and Republican candidates. Not including donations to Walker, Hendricks and her husband, Ken, since 1997 have contributed just over $500,000 to political candidates and committees in races ranging from the state Assembly to the presidency, with the overwhelming majority going to Republicans, according to federal data as well as state data compiled by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Under U.S. law, broadcast frequencies may be used only by people of good "character," who will serve "the public interest," and speak with "candor." Significant character deficiencies may warrant disqualification from holding a license."
Delusional right-wing crazy talk - the kind of ranting we've heard recently from washed-up rock star Ted Nugent and Tea Party-backed Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) - is a special kind of poison that cannot be safely ignored.
Let me be clear: I'm saying that the extreme language we hear from the far right is qualitatively different from the extreme language we hear from the far left - and far more damaging to the ties that bind us as a nation.
Tut-tutting that both sides should tone it down is meaningless. (That's for Senator Bennet, Colorado's No. 1 Tut-tutter.)
For all intents and purposes, one side is the problem.
Maybe Bennet reads the Post. I know he doesn't read SquareState.
Bloomberg News had the good sense to actually compare the actual argument audio with what the RNC distributed. It turns out to have been materially doctored. As the Bloomberg piece says, "A review of a transcript and recordings of those moments shows that Verrilli took a sip of water just once, paused for a much briefer period, and completed his thought, rather than stuttering and trailing off as heard in the doctored version."
I've been in practice for seventeen years, and the blog has existed for ten, and this is the single most classless and misleading thing I've ever seen related to the Court. It is as if the RNC decided to take an incredibly serious and successful argument that has the chance to produce a pathbreaking legal victory for a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, drag it through the mud, and vomit on it. I would be shocked if a serious conservative lawyer would stand by the ad.
Supreme Court Justice doesn't want to read Affordable Care Act details
(Zappatero)
Justice Antonin Scalia seemed surprised that someone would have expected the justices to read the text of the health care reform law before the hearings. He then resorted to the excuse given by lazy Republicans during the original debate over the same bill.
Snowe is continually granted the benefit of the doubt on these matters. She is credulously accorded the label of "moderate willing to work with Obama," based mainly on her vote for the stimulus, and on her supposed work with Dems to pass health care reform, before "partisanship" on both sides somehow forced her to oppose the final bill. Alex Pareene corrects the record:
How hard did she try, again? If I recall correctly, she intentionally delayed the process for months before finally voting against a plan she'd previously voted for, never making a single substantive criticism of the policy of the bill in the fear that her criticism would then be addressed by Democrats and she'd be forced to come up with a new reason to oppose the bill, because it turns out she didn't actually want to vote for healthcare reform, and she would not have supported any plan to expand coverage to all Americans, no matter how it worked.
