Maine Hodgepodge-- Good Stuff Between The Lines (I promise)

In 2010-- a year when Republicans surged everywhere-- I think less than 5 Democratic incumbents actually increased their support from the voters. One was Chellie Pingree of Maine, who Rachel Maddow interviewed about the newly opened Maine Senate seat above. In 2008, a year favorable to Democrats, Pingree won her congressional race to replace Tom Allen in the first district with 55%, while in Maine's other congressional district, longtime incumbent Mike Michaud, a Blue Dog, was reelected with 67%. Then came 2008-- the Blue Dog Apocalypse-- and Pingree, a stalwart and outspoken progressive, bucked the trend that swept Paul LePage into the governor's chair and saddled Maine with a teabaggy state legislature. Her percentage of the vote increased from 55% to 57%. Michaud, on the other hand, crashed. He went from 67% down to 55%-- his worst showing since first being elected in 2002. Maine has a funny political culture that isn't easy for an outsider to understand.

The first vote in Congress after the national Blue Dog Apocalypse that handed the House over to the GOP-- and after Maine elected LePage and that teabaggy legislature-- was to elect the new Speaker and the Democratic Leader. That was on January 5, 2011. All 241 Republicans voted for John Boehner to be Speaker. Chellie Pingree and 172 other Democrats voted for Nancy Pelosi to lead the Democratic Party. But the most conservative fringe of the Democratic caucus decided to put up their own candidate, an arch reactionary who lived in the C Street House with Jim DeMint and other right-wing sociopaths. They picked Heath Shuler. Eleven Democrats voted for Shuler against Pelosi. And one of those 11 was Mike Michaud. The other 10, simply put, were the 10 Democrats who went on to vote most frequently with the Republicans on the crucial rollcalls on 2011-12-- far right throwbacks like Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA)... the worst of the worst. That's the pack in which Maine's bachelor congressman runs.


A few weeks ago, we looked at the Democratic primary race to find someone to run against Snowe. That's changed dramatically. Michaud is in. Pingree is in (though she hasn't officially announced) and former Governor John Baldacci, who served from 2003-2011, is in. (Before running for governor, he had served in Congress for 4 terms, where he was a member of the dangerous, right-wing C Street cult.) Independents-- and they make up almost a third of the voter base in Maine-- will probably have a candidate as well, which is how LePage wound up as governor. This time ex-Gov. Angus King and Eliot Cutler (the independent who threw the election to LePage) are both looking at running.

On the Republican side the highly unpopular state Senate president Kevin Raye, as well as former gubernatorial candidate Peter Cianchette and State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin are all making noises about running.

This was Snowe's stated reason to give up the seat:

"After an extraordinary amount of reflection and consideration, I am announcing today that I will not be a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate.

"After 33 years in the Congress this was not an easy decision. My husband and I are in good health. We have laid an exceptionally strong foundation for the campaign, and I have no doubt I would have won re-election. It has been an indescribable honor and immeasurable privilege to serve the people of Maine, first in both houses of Maine's legislature and later in both houses of Congress. To this day, I remain deeply passionate about public service, and I cherish the opportunity I have been given for nearly four decades to help improve the lives of my fellow Mainers.

"As I have long said, what motivates me is producing results for those who have entrusted me to be their voice and their champion, and I am filled with that same sense of responsibility today as I was on my first day in the Maine House of Representatives. I do find it frustrating, however, that an atmosphere of polarization and 'my way or the highway' ideologies has become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions.

"With my Spartan ancestry I am a fighter at heart; and I am well prepared for the electoral battle, so that is not the issue. However, what I have had to consider is how productive an additional term would be. Unfortunately, I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term. So at this stage of my tenure in public service, I have concluded that I am not prepared to commit myself to an additional six years in the Senate, which is what a fourth term would entail.

"As I enter a new chapter, I see a vital need for the political center in order for our democracy to flourish and to find solutions that unite rather than divide us. It is time for change in the way we govern, and I believe there are unique opportunities to build support for that change from outside the United States Senate. I intend to help give voice to my fellow citizens who believe, as I do, that we must return to an era of civility in government driven by a common purpose to fulfill the promise that is unique to America.

"In the meantime, as I complete my third term, I look forward to continuing to fight for the people of Maine and the future of our nation. And I will be forever and unyieldingly grateful for the trust that the people of Maine have placed in me, and for the phenomenal friendship and assistance I have received over the years from my colleagues, my supporters, and my staff, both in Maine and in Washington."

And, no doubt, that has a lot to do with why she's retiring. But perhaps a scandal starting to engulf her husband, former Gov. John McKernan, figured into her decision as well.

The U.S. Justice Department, 11 states and the District of Columbia are backing an employee whistleblower lawsuit against Education Management Corp. (EDMC), a company once run by former Maine Governor John McKernan. McKernan continues to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors. He also is the husband of Senator Olympia Snowe (R - Maine).

The complaint alleges that the for-profit college chain was illegally paying recruiters based on the number of students they could sign up. EDMC allegedly based recruiter salaries on their sales abilities and also gave recruiters prizes, including expensive trips, based on their ability to bring students in. Federal law bans for-profit colleges that accept federal aid from compensating employees based on their ability to recruit students. Harry Litman, an attorney for the two former employees who are serving as whistleblowers in this case, said EDMC's violations were obvious.

"It did it flagrantly," Litman said. "It did it for many years. It lied to the federal government about it. And [employee incentives] fueled their explosive growth to $2.5 billion a year, almost all of which is taxpayer money."

The federal government has been looking into whether for-profit colleges have been defrauding taxpayers by enrolling students who are not qualified, and therefore more likely to default on their student loans.

UPDATE: Michaud's Out

Of the race, I mean. He sent this out:

While I have been humbled by all the support and encouragement I have received in the last few days, I've decided to not run for the U.S. Senate this year. I want to continue to represent the wonderful people of Maine's second district and keep working on the unique issues and challenges we face. I am also very proud of what I have been able to accomplish on behalf of Maine's and America's veterans and that work must continue.

I join many Mainers in being frustrated with how Washington operates and believe that both sides of Capitol Hill have fallen into a partisan rut. However, I am proud of being able to work across the aisle to deliver results and I think, for now, I can best continue those efforts in the House.

Wise decision.

Will John Ensign Share A Cell With Duke Cunningham? And What About Coburn?

Las Vegas betting parlors will be changing the question from "When will John Ensign resign from the Senate?" to "How many years will John Ensign serve in federal prison?" Although the national media has been far more titillated with the circus Fox created out of Eric Massa's breakdown, regardless of the fact that Massa resigned and is getting (real) medical help, than in Nevada Senator Ensign's scandalous saga, it is never far from the front page or the nightly news. The national media is being forced to deal with it again too.

This week Las Vegas' local CBS affiliate was all over the case and instead of listening to modern day Know Nothings with tricorner hats drooling on themselves and screaming "read the bill," people in Nevada are being urged to read the subpoena.

Nevada Senator John Ensign is in the crosshairs of a Department of Justice criminal investigation.

The criminal probe stems from a romantic affair Ensign had with the wife of his key staffer and close friend, Doug Hampton, and what Ensign has done to help Hampton financially.

Subpoenas have been issued to at least six Las Vegas businesses. The Justice Department came to Las Vegas to interview several prominent business and political figures in what appears to be a wide-ranging and deadly-serious criminal probe.

The Las Vegas Sun was far harsher than KLAS (Channel 8). This morning they began their Ensign coverage with "It’s no longer a question of 'if' but of 'when' between now and January 2013 that John Ensign’s short, previously happy, suddenly unhappy life as a senator will end."

The parlor games are all great fun: Would Gov. Jim Gibbons appoint his opponent, Brian Sandoval, to Ensign’s seat if it came to a resignation and would Sandoval take it? Or: Can Rep. Shelley Berkley really compete for that seat she now covets as lustily as Ensign coveted his neighbor’s wife?

But the nagging, all-too-serious question is this: Is Ensign so self-absorbed and delusional that he is willing to bring down folks of varying innocence with him-- either people loyal to him now having to hire attorneys to defend themselves because of the senator’s scandal or those whose tangential roles in his life have them under federal scrutiny.

Politicians are notoriously solipsistic, but Ensign’s behavior since his confess-and-run news conference June 16 has set a new nadir. It’s one thing to be exposed as a spectacular hypocrite, a moral crusader with feet of clay, and yet try to hang onto your Club of 100 membership as if it were more important than anything. But it’s quite different to become the focus of criminal and ethics probes and continue to clutch onto the senatorial ring despite the carnage-- real, quantifiable human carnage-- you are leaving in your wake.

What about reputable businessmen and businesses who have had shadows cast over their reputations by Ensign’s behavior-- trying to get the cuckolded Doug Hampton a job-- essentially ensnaring them in his massive cover-up? Ensign couldn’t care less about the effect on them when feds show up at their doors with subpoenas, the existence of which is inevitably leaked to the media.

What about John Lopez, who had an impeccable reputation on the Hill, but who now must hire a lawyer and be placed in the ineffably awful position of having to implicate his former boss? And my guess is he can. Lopez, given a soft landing at R&R Partners, may be the key to the entire case against Ensign in the probe of whether he conspired to help Hampton violate a cooling-off law.

What about Mike Slanker, the veteran political consultant who Ensign tasked with finding Hampton clients without, it appears, fully disclosing why, and forcing Slanker and his wife, another ex-Ensign aide, to defend themselves? I know many Democrats who despise Slanker for his brutal campaigns are feeling a sense of schadenfreude, but no one-- no one-- deserves that kind of treatment from someone who received loyalty for so many years.

And most of all, what about Ensign’s family having to continually endure the Chinese water torture that the senator could easily end with a simple announcement? If he were in private life, his wife and children would not have to constantly read more about his all-too-public transgressions.

We also learned Thursday that the subpoena-spreading around Nevada and Washington included the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The multitasking Ensign headed the committee while he was pursuing Cynthia Hampton. Again, good, faceless people are at risk because of Ensign’s unyielding impulse for self-preservation.

And what of the contributors at the time? As one wag put it, “Give to the NRSC and win a free trip to Washington to appear before a federal grand jury!”

That’s funny. But this story has little humor left, despite the rich lampooning vein for late-night comics and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

It’s clear from interviews conducted here and by national newspapers that Ensign abused his power as a senator to cover up his affair and to try to buy Hampton’s silence. But the senator may never admit to wrongdoing or be found technically guilty of anything. He is hardly innocent, though-- guilty at least of unethical conduct by normal barometers, and of selfishly using those close to him to help cover his tracks and then jeopardizing their livelihoods.

Hmm. Sounds almost exactly what President Bill Clinton did to cover up his indiscretion. And John Ensign called on him to resign.

Senator, heal thyself.

Rachel Maddow hasn't gotten back into the Ensign scandal the way you know is coming. But she's always up for talking about the C Street cult-- lately in regard to anti-Choice fanatic-- and that always means that C Street cultist John Ensign is going to get mentioned... as he was last night:

Stupak Stigmata And The Martyrdom Of A Deranged Cultist

Bart sees himself as a martyr now, rather than as an asshole

Michigan mishuganah, Bart Stupak, a putative Democrat from the northernmost reaches of that state-- 1% African-American, less than 1% Hispanic and 0.4% Asian-- joined Washington's most dangerous religious cult, The Family, and flipped out. He then figured out he could sabotage the Democratic Party entirely by wrecking the president's #1 agenda item-- healthcare reform-- by working with fellow C-Street cultist, Joe Pitts (R-PA), to falsely paint the healthcare reform bill as a trick to make abortion opponents pay for poor women's abortions. He's been working directly with the Republicans and right-wing elements to bring down the bill-- and the party-- something applauded Inside-the-Beltway as "bipartisanship."

As you know, anger has been building and building and exploded last week into a primary challenge from Connie Saltonstall. In less than a week, she has already raised over $50,000 online, more than $15,000 of it from Blue America. Stupak is freaking out now and realizes he could actually lose his seat over this.

He's complaining that his life has become a living hell, with his phone lines "jammed" with angry pro-choice and/or pro-health care callers and his wife has become so disconcerted that she's had to disconnect the family phone, an unlisted number, which seems to indicate that even their own friends are calling them to complain about Stupak's nefarious role in the healthcare debate.

“All the phones are unplugged at our house — tired of the obscene calls and threats. She won’t watch TV,” Stupak said during an hourlong interview with The Hill in his Rayburn office. “People saying they’re going to spit on you and all this. That’s just not fun.”

...“How’s it been? Like a living hell,” Stupak said.

The 57-year-old Democrat said he has a history of working behind the scenes with Democratic leaders on abortion.

“In the past, we’ve always been able to work it out,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve not been able to work it out.”

Other anti-abortion-rights Democrats have said they’ll support the Senate bill.

Rep. Dale Kildee, another Democrat from Michigan known for opposing abortion, released a statement on Wednesday supporting the Senate bill, which he said would prevent federal funds from going to abortion services.

But the intensity of the resistance to Stupak’s position has, if anything, stiffened his resolve. He shows no signs of voting for the Senate healthcare bill, which could hit the House floor this week.

“I’m pretty stubborn,” said Stupak, who keeps in his shirt pocket a list of lawmakers who are willing to vote no. The so-called Stupak Dozen met Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill to strategize and exchange stories of the pressure they are under.

Today Stupak tried making a deal with the leadership-- to vote for the bill, in the hope of slowing down the tidal wave of support Connie has been getting for standing up to his shameless bullying, in return-- listen to this-- for them letting him bring up his anti-Choice bill every single year. And he says if they agree, he can deliver useful idiot Marcy Kaptur as well. So far they've told him to go take a hike. We'll see. Meanwhile, please continue to support Connie's campaign. It certainly seems to be having an impact-- and sending the Democrats a message they can understand.

At about 8 minutes in, Rachel Maddow explains the battle between Stupak and almost 60,000 Catholic nuns. (Earlier she chats with Ezra Klein about the missing CBO numbers which, as you probably know, are no longer missing-- and are awesome, numbers that would even be hard for honest fiscal conservatives to vote against... if there were any. In fact, I watched demented Oklahoma anti-healthcare fanatic Tom Coburn publicly threatening to "get" any Republican in the House who breaks rank with the zombie-army and votes for the bill, regardless of the fact that it would bring the deficit down by $1.3 trillion.



And, in case you missed it yesterday, Stupak's own committeeHouse Commerce and Energy , came out with a review of the impact of the bill on Stupak's constituents, the very people who are now encouraging Connie to run. Highlights of what the bill will achieve in Northern Michigan's first CD:

* Improve coverage for 364,000 residents with health insurance.

* Give tax credits and other assistance to up to 197,000 families and 17,900 small businesses to help
them afford coverage.

* Improve Medicare for 141,000 beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole.

* Extend coverage to 44,000 uninsured residents.

* Guarantee that 10,000 residents with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.

* Protect 1,100 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.

* Allow 50,000 young adults to obtain coverage on their parents’ insurance plans.

* Provide millions of dollars in new funding for 41 community health centers.

* Reduce the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers by $102
million annually.

You know about the C Street cult, right?

Is There A Republican Case FOR Healthcare Reform? And Is Bart Stupak Breaking The Law?

LaHood and Schock, havin' a party

Since there isn't a single Republican in the House or Senate who isn't too scared to death of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and that pack of far right media hyenas and their raucous, self-righteous followers to make the argument for meaningful healthcare reform, Obama's Republican Secretary of Transportation did it yesterday in the Chicago Tribune.

LaHood was a conservative Republican congressman, as partisan as the rest of them, although not notably sociopathic. He was elected to represent the strongly Republican central Illinois 18th CD in 1994, a district that has an R+5 PVI and that was one of only three in Illinois McCain won, albeit with only 50% of the vote. (In the 2006 Democratic wave year LaHood was re-elected with 67% of the vote.) LaHood campaigned for and voted for McCain. If he got into fights with his Republican colleagues, it was generally because he is a deficit hawk and resented them spending tax money like a bunch of drunken sailors. He calls himself "a fiscal conservative, an advocate for a smart, but restrained, government."

For those reasons and others, most people wouldn't expect me to be an advocate for comprehensive health care reform. But the truth is, I believe there is no bigger issue to solve and no better chance to solve it than now.

If I were still a member of Congress, I would proudly vote for the bill that President Barack Obama is championing and I would urge my colleagues to do the same, not because I don't believe in fiscal discipline, but because I do.

We do not need to look that far down the road to see the pain that failure to pass health care reform will cause. Americans of every background, class, race and political persuasion are suffering. We have the best health care system in the world, yet more than 40 million Americans lack access to it, a reality that is morally reprehensible. Health care is an essential, as important as food, water and shelter. Those who don't have it are left without the tools to survive.

In the coming days, Congress has a chance to change that. The bill that will be voted on will reduce the deficit by about $1 trillion over the next two decades, and will reduce waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system. It will slow the rate of growth in health care costs and put America back on the path toward fiscal sustainability.

The bill will give families and small business owners greater control over their own health care. It will expand coverage to more than 31 million Americans and will include tax credits to individuals, families and small businesses, giving them the same choices that members of Congress have to purchase private coverage. It will create state-based exchanges that will bring competition and transparency to insurance markets. And it will put in place common-sense rules of the road to hold insurance companies accountable and end some of the most outrageous practices of the insurance industry.

Never again will people be denied coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. Never again will insurance companies be able to raise rates unfairly-- like the 60 percent hikes expected in Illinois.

While the ultimate vote on health care may not be bipartisan, the ultimate bill certainly is.

There are several Republican ideas in the bill. It allows Americans to buy health insurance across state lines. It increases the bargaining power of small businesses by allowing them to pool together-- much like large corporations or labor unions-- to bargain for a better insurance rate. It gives states the flexibility to come up with an alternate health care plan, and it gives them resources to reform our tort system by developing new ways to deal with medical malpractice.

LaHood's plea to his former colleagues in Congress-- or the twerpy, cowardly little closet queen who won his seat, Adam Schock-- to seize "the opportunity to change the lives of their friends and neighbors for the better by voting for health care reform"-- will fall on deaf ears. I doubt even Ahn Cao (R-LA), the one Republican who voted for it the first time around, will vote for it again, even though the majority of Americans-- and certainly the majority of Americans in his congressional district-- want healthcare reform and reject Jim DeMint's tactic of using healthcare obstructionism to cripple Obama's presidency.

On the other hand, it looks like Bart Stupak's attempt to hold the entire nation's healthcare reform hostage (I'm told based on a sudden conversion to religious fanaticism due to his son's suicide, with Stupak's gun) is failing. As Rachel Maddow explained, the House leadership peeled away some of his support, which was largely garnered by using false GOP talking points about abortion funding, and then called Stupak's bluff and left him muttering darkly to himself on the sidelines. (Please consider contributing to Connie Saltonstall, the progressive woman standing up to him on his home turf by running a primary against him.)

Conservatives Want To Give Gays A Choice: Get The Cure Or... Get Killed

Do conservatives-- in this country, at this time, Republicans and Blue Dogs-- want to exterminate gay people? You'll have to ask them. I'm sure the Log Cabin Republicans and the GOProud Republicans don't. I doubt Republican closet cases David Dreier and Charlie Crist and Lindsey Graham want to. (I'm not as certain about more tightly closeted Republicans-- and more hysterical closeted Republicans at that-- like Mitch McConnell, Trent Franks, Adrian Smith and Patrick McHenry. And I'm far less certain about what the religio-fascist C-Street cult would like. They're at least partially behind the Kill the Gays legislation in the process of being adopted by Uganda. Last night Rachel Maddow interviewed huckster Richard Cohen, a self-proclaimed psychologist who says he "cures" gays and wrote a book, Coming Out Straight, that has been widely seen as a profitable joke-- until Ugandan right-wingers started using it to justify their anti-gay jihad. Oh-- and speaking of jihads by religious fanatics... Muslims also offer people who think differently than they do an opportunity to "change or die" just before they're killed (or "converted").

Below are both segments of Rachel's interview with Cohen, who may or may not have worked on Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), another "former" gay who now claims to be (mostly) straight.

Comedy This Morning: Doonesbury's Senator X, finding absolution on C Street, is inspired to new heights in his affair

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Apparently, fellowshipping with the C Street Christian bros not only is good for the soul but, er, enhances performance.

(We've got the whole C Street series-to-date up here.)


UPDATE: Howie's Two Cents

At this point it's impossible to cover the myriad scandals at the secret C Street house without talking about fascism and without at least skirting pornography. Even the chairman of the NRSC, John Cornyn (R-TX), is now refusing to endorse John Ensign for re-election!

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Comedy Tonight: "I have sinned, but I'm special" -- Doonesbury takes on C Street

[Click to enlarge]

Uh-oh, looks like it's not going to be a fun week in the funnypapers for the boys in the C Street clubhouse.

THE PLOT SICKENS: TUESDAY'S STRIP --

OH, THOSE BOYS! HERE'S WEDNESDAY'S --


Ccheck out each day's strip at the Doonesbury Daily Dose.

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The C Street clubhouse: the place for self-absorbed "Christian" pols on the make to do it all -- to fellowship, pray, talk about Jesus, and eat

If Jenny Sanford had been a more traditionally subservient "barefoot and obedient" Christian wife, might her scumbag husband have gotten away with his "Argentine adventure"? True, he was getting idiotically indiscreet, and now he seems to have turned into a babbling buffoon, but maybe that's 'cause he got caught?

"We'd fellowship, we'd pray, we'd talk about Jesus, and we'd eat. In the headiness of Washington, D.C., it's trying to make sure you keep your head screwed on straight."

-- Michigan Rep. "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra, making public

his previously unknown connection with the Family,

which he stressed ended two years ago

"Recently, an unscrupulous author has implied that I am involved in meetings or am even a resident at what is called the C Street House located in Washington, D.C. To be clear, I have never lived at the C Street House nor have I participated in any regular Bible studies or so-called counseling sessions there. Over the past decade, I have attended a few luncheons at the house involving ambassadors and other members of Congress. While there, I had conversations with those in attendance. Other than these few visits at the house, I have had no membership or involvement in meetings at the house."

-- Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt, in a statement issued to KWCH Wichita, whose reporter Kim Wilhelm did a report on the Family Sunday

"Their idea is to identify politicians who are in positions of power, placed there not so much by voters but by God. The Family helps polish them up -- become more sophisticated leaders so they can better serve this ‘vision of the kingdom' as they put it. So they can do good things, they can do bad things, it doesn't matter. They're chosen for power. And the Family believes it's their job to help them stay in power."

-- Jeff Sharlet, in KWCH Wichita's report on the Family

by Ken

All of that, plus . . . it's Christian!

When last we visited the now-famous house on C Street that houses the kook Christian power cult called the Family, I believe it was former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering's turn at the GOP Adultery Flogging Post. (These days you really have to book ahead.) Our Chip, you'll recall, who left Congress in 2007, ostensibly to spend more time with his actual family, meaning wife Leisha and their five sons, turns out to have been having yet another of these tediously humiliating affairs, this one apparently conducted at least in part within the sacred walls of the Family's C Street clubhouse. And they are sacred, because --

SHH! DON'T MENTION THIS TO THE IRS!

To its best knowledge, the building is in fact a church. Expansive as the IRS traditionally is in interpreting what constitutes a church, given our country's traditional -- not to mention constitutional -- commitment to separation of church and state, in the face of all that we've learned about the Family and the C Street clubhouse, somebody at the IRS could think that at least a few questions might be in order.

Ironically, the type of pol drawn to the Family tends to be publicly, dare I say righteously, scornful of the whole concept of separation of church and state. The Family itself doesn't even pay lip service to the idea.

An interesting wrinkle in the case of Chip Pickering, you'll recall, is that, as Max Blumenthal reported for The Daily Beast, Leisha Pickering's divorce filing revealed that her guy "recorded details of his exploits in a secret diary, including the dates and locations of his adulterous encounters." What's more, Chip's sex diary "reveals the identities of several men who enabled his adulterous trysts and helped him cover his tracks."

OOH, A SEX DIARY? AW-RIGHT! WHERE
IS IT? WE WANNA SEE THE SEX DIARY!

According to Max Blumenthal: "Thanks to heavily politicized local courts and an aggressive damage-control campaign waged by Pickering and his powerful Republican allies, the diary, which is said to contain the answers to these questions, is locked away in a courtroom in Mississippi. And if Pickering has his way, it will stay there indefinitely." Sorry!

Now don't forget about that diary. (Like as if you're thinking about anything else! Except maybe wondering if there's also video.) We're going to come back to it. And while you're remembering, note -- in the "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra quote at the top of this post -- the Crazyman's emphasis on the fact that his association with the Family ended two years ago. It's just possible that these two details could be connected!

Anyway, since our last visit, so much has happened on the C Street front that it's hard to take it all in. To be honest, I've kind of tuned out. We've already learned plenty about the heady mixture of Bible-thumping and power-mongering concocted by Family patriarch Doug Coe and his chip-off-the-old-block son David. In the time since our giddy discovery of the embarrassing and rather alarming links between the Family and the marital follies of putative presidential pretenders Nevada Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. (and, importantly, former U.S. Rep.) Mark Sanford, it's all had kind of a same-old, same-old ring.

Perhaps the most interesting development has been what we might call "The Flight from the Family," which is to say the growing number of Family-style pols who have suddenly become shy about celebrating their Christianity, something they were once prepared to do anytime they found themselves within range of a camera. Now they either refuse to comment on reputed ties to the Family or deny them outright, sort of. "Outright" denial seems a bit of a reach for them, and so we're getting a fascinating assortment of indignant denials of involvement beyond certain carefully delimited points. Which brings us to the Kansas and Michigan connections.

THE KANSAS AND MICHIGAN CONNECTIONS

Sunday night KWCH-TV Wichita's Kim Wilhelm did a nearly four-minute report on the Family, drawing on Jeff Sharlet's book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, including excerpts from Jeff's appearances with Rachel Maddow and a phone interview of her own. You have to give both the reporter the station credit. It doesn't seem likely that Wichita folk had heard much about the subject. And as the piece makes clear, there are Kansas connections to the Family. The written version of the report (which is similar to but not a trasncript of the TV version) notes:

The group rents out rooms to members of Congress. Kansas Congressman Jerry Moran's staff confirms he stays at C Street. His office refused to answer questions or comment further. Sharlet's book has no mention of Moran, but it does list Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Todd Tiahrt as members.

Congressman Tiahrt (that's pronounced "Tea-heart," as in "teabag"), as we've already noted up top, could hardly be more vehement in his denial of "membership" or much of any real association with the Family. At the same time, if you were to parse his statement closely, you could find any number of ways in which it could represent careful weaseling, and in the event that documentary evidence should begin turning up, one wonders whether those "few visits" might not grow the way, say, Jack Abramoff's few visits to the White House eventually did.

Our Todd, by the way, is probably most famous for his recent contribution to the House health care debate, shown in the KWCH report, where he made the case against allowing government funding of abortions, which of course his deep religious convictions lead him to oppose, thusly:

If you think of it in human terms, there is a financial incentive that will be put in place, paid for by tax dollars, that will encourage women who are -- single parents, living below the poverty level, to have the opportunity for a free abortion. If you take that scenario and apply it to many of the great minds we have today, who would we have been deprived of? Our president grew up in a similar circumstance. If that financial incentive was in place, is it possible that his mother may have taken advantage of it? Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice, if those circumstances were in place, is it possible that we would be denied his great mind?

Let me just say here that this speech seems to me all-but-irrefutable proof of the non-existence of a god, or at least one with any self-respect, who could hardly fail to respond with a prompt smiting. Working in mysterious ways is all well and good, but surely there are limits.

Now as to the Michigan connection, what most struck Emptywheel's Marcy Wheeler, a veteran watcher of the congressman whom she calls, possibly affectionately, "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra (only she doesn't use quotation marks), was the mere fact that he "preemptively" announced his connection to the Family: "Frankly, I hadn't even realized Crazy Pete was a member of this group, and I could swear I've checked once (he is definitely their 'type.' So it surprises me a bit to see Crazy Pete offering up his ties to the group."

"Crazy Pete," by the way, is probably best remembered for his shockingly inept, dishonest, Bush-abetting performance as a member and then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Actually, Wikipedia reminds us of what's probably the next-most-distinctive aspect of his nine-terms-and-counting career: that it was made possible in good part by beating up on 13-term GOP powerhouse Guy Vander Jagt for having been in Congress so long. That's why primary insurgent Hoekstra pledged to serve no more than six terms, and already-expansive concept of term limits which Congressman Hoekstra seems to have found intolerably restrictive when it came time to run for term number seven.

"Crazy Pete," as you may have heard, is looking seriously at a race for governor of Michigan. Marcy, while acknowledging that it's pure speculation on her part, speculated in that Sunday post about a possible link between his separation from the Family and the famous Chip Pickering sex diary:

Pickering resigned in August 2007, just under two years ago. If the diary precipitated the divorce, then it may end about two years ago.

So if someone like Crazy Pete knew that his involvement in yet another hypocritical affair might become public, he might be able to say that he ended his relationship with the group two years ago, setting up a very convenient story just in case anything became public between now and when he tried to run for Governor.

I have no idea whether Pickering's diary time bomb is the reason for Crazy Pete's pre-emptive admission of ties with C Street. But the timing does make me want to see Pickering's diary all the more.

Before we leave "Crazy Pete," I think we need to pay some sort of tribute to a man who: (a) has shown us, by using it in a sentence, how to use "fellowship" as a verb, and (b) has so tidily summed up the Family agenda as a bunch of good Christian men getting together to keep their heads screwed on straight by means of the Big Four: fellowshiping, praying, talking about Jesus, and eating. Strangely, there is no mention of having affairs and counseling one another on said affairs while keeping them totally secret from everyone else, including spouses.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN SEX???

Notice how we keep coming back to the sex scandals, which always make for the juiciest, not to mention attention-gettingest, copy. It's been clear ever since the Family got dragged into the spotlight in connection with the Ensign and Sanford high jinks, that Jeff Sharlet, in his capacity as reigning outside expert on the Family (at this point he's become Rachel Maddow's virtual cohost, on a broadcast that might be renamed The Rachel Maddow Show, featuring Jeff Sharlet on the Family), thought and thinks there's something more important than sex scandal to the story. While I wouldn't presume to speak for Jeff, I think what he's trying to call attention to is neatly summed up in the quote he gave KWCH, up top. I think it's worth a replay:

Their idea is to identify politicians who are in positions of power, placed there not so much by voters but by God. The Family helps polish them up -- become more sophisticated leaders so they can better serve this ‘vision of the kingdom' as they put it. So they can do good things, they can do bad things, it doesn't matter. They're chosen for power. And the Family believes it's their job to help them stay in power.

I realize it will be a serious comedown for tabloid-trained news consumers if it turns out that the really important story about the family is nothing sexier than a cult master's clever fusion of religion with power, all built on a bedrock of Christian hypocrisy. That's not all that sexy, is it?

Well, there are those who might disagree, like for example Leisha Pickering and Jenny Sanford. I'm a bit surprised myself tp find that in the end this is where my thoughts are gravitating. Because neither Chip Pickering nor Mark Sanford seems to have chosen the traditionally subservient barefoot-and-obedient Christian wife who exists for no purpose greater than to serve her master. Both Leisha and Jenny appear to be seriously bright women who were at least as responsible for their husbands' career successes as the possibly less-bright men.

Here are those old sweethearts Chip and Leisha Pickering. What a handsome couple, no? It's not hard to understand that Chip would have given up his seat in Congress to spend more time with Leisha and their five boys. 

Of course we don't know what went on behind the scenes with the Pickerings all those years. Leisha doesn't seem to have had any insupportable problem with Chip's ambitions when he was a rising star in God's Own Party. At some point, though, she seems to have become noticeably less enthusiastic about Doug Coe's "you can have it all, hornyboy" Family program. The apparently not-very-discreet affair seems to have exhausted such tolerance as she may once have had.

There are marriages that can handle that, and there are marriages that can't. Mrs. Pickering, however, made the unusual choice, for a good Republican wife, of not going quietly.

Poor Mark Sanford seems to have run into a similar sort of wifely uppitiness. A man of his, er, appetites should probably have had a proper wife of the barefoot-obedient sort, the sort who would know her place. (What was it Jimmy Carter was just saying about male religious leaders who have "overwhelmingly chosen" to "subjugate" rather than "exalt" women?)

To his credit, our Mark doesn't seem ever to have been looking for that sort of mate. Oh, Jenny comes from serious money, which would certainly have helped qualify her as a suitable Christian wife for a good Christian pol under the old standards. But she sure seems like someone who knows how to take care of herself -- and, when it came to it, her children. But when she met Mark, she was a player on Wall Street. They met in the Hamptons, you'll recall, not at a church social. She spent six years as a vice president (mergers and acquisitions) at the investment bank Lazard Freres. When the Sanfords moved south and Mark launched his political career, she seems to have worked at it if anything harder than he did. Until recently she was usually described as his top adviser.

Even after the doody hit the fan, Mark, when asked how he was handling his wife's discovery of his affair,, was still burbling stuff like, "This goes into the personal zone. I'd simply say that Jenny has been absolutely magnanimous and gracious as a wonderful Christian woman in this process."

As a matter of fact, Jenny seems to have been prepared to do whatever it took to save the marriage, if only for the sake of the kids. She "knew" for a long time without revealing anything publicly. She had stumbled across a love letter in Mark's files. It was, we're told, quite a shock. ("I didn't think he had it in him.")

If Mark had had the good Christian sense to marry the kind of woman toads of his sort traditionally did, or turned their wimminfolk into, then when it came to crunch time -- you know, when he "went hiking the Appalachian Trail" -- she might have covered for him. Not Jenny, though, who you'll recall helped fan the flames of intrigue by making it absolutely clear that she had no idea where her the father of their four sons was on Fathers' Day.

She had her reasons. It turns out that lovelorn Mark had actually begged her for permission to, um, pop down to Argentina to, er, visit the sights! Astoundingly, unlike that good Christian wife he should have had, Jenny said no! Or as she tells it, "I said absolutely not. It's one thing to forgive adultery. It's another thing to condone it." We can guess that as the drama unfolded, Jenny, being as far as she is from the model of the barefoot-and-obedient wife, didn't respond at all well to the growing inklings that the Atlanta airport, not the Appalachian Trail, was where Mark had headed.

The portrait of Mark that emerges -- and of Chip too, for that matter -- is of a greedy, self-absorbed young pol who knows how to think big, a horny toad on the make in every sense. For the Family, it would appear, Bible-thumping is optional at the outset. If you've got a horny enough young toad who can sling a little "family values" lingo, we can teach him enough Jesus to hornswoggle all those needy folks out there who crave a proper Christian tongue-lashing.

If it's any consolation to Leisha and Jenny, the guys were bums. I feel bad for them, and for their combined nine boys, who you have to hope don't grow up to be bums like their dads.

"Family values" indeed.

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A show of hands: Are there any Crap Christian moralizers out there who aren't having affairs or doing other dastardly deeds?

When Chip Pickering announced in August 2007 that he wouldn't run for reelection to Congress (actually, he wound up quitting without even serving out his term), he said he wanted to spend more time with his wife Leisha and their five sons, ages 8-17. How'd that work out, Chip?

by Ken

So now it's former Mississippi Congressman Chip Pickering, the latest addition to the parade of C Street sleazebags, along with Nevada Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. The estranged Mrs. Pickering has filed an alienation of affection suit against the Chipster's mistress. And yes, you guessed it, our Chip is another C Streeter -- and indeed, in his new career as (what else?) a lobbyist, part of a phalanx of Family members working a C Street-K Street axis.

So Rachel Maddow had to drag poor Jeff Sharlet away from his intended vacation yet again last night, for another session on the fundamentalist cult he infiltrated, and eventually wrote a book about it, The Family. (Jeff, by the way, while acknowledging that the C Street Family house has the atmosphere of "a fundamentalist frat house," thinks all the philandering is less important than the pipelines to power being established by the morality-be-damned C Street fundies, and that there are still some really explosive stories waiting to explode.)



Isn't there some point at which we have to wonder about what drives a person to enter religious or political service to bully helpless fellow citizens into adhering into moral precepts they don't even think about practicing in their own lives? "Hypocrisy" doesn't begin to cover it. Surely we're talking about some recognized pathology?


MEANWHILE, THINGS AREN'T LOOKING
SO ENCOURAGING FOR SENATOR ENSIGN

Margaret Carlson reported today on The Daily Beast that Senate Republicans, who welcomed Sen. John "My Mommy and Daddy Say You Should Oghtta Stop Being Mean to Me" Ensign back so enthusiastically when he made his triumphant return following his admission that he had, er, strayed, have become a lot less sympathetic in the face of the barrage of subsequent revelations, with no end in sight. Those GOP senators, concerned about holding the Nevada Senate seat currently occupied by Senator Ensign, and they want him to help by doing something -- namely, quit.

GOP Plots Ensign's Ouster

Republican Sen. John Ensign did what any red-blooded American would do upon returning to the floor of the Senate after the revelation that his parents paid off his mistress and her family. He gave a speech about a bill to help families of our wonderful veterans and brought his young son along as a human shield.

But compared to the first time Ensign showed up on the Hill after news broke that he'd had an affair with the spouse of his top aide, the reception was much less fulsome. The earlier attitude was the whole thing would blow over. Members of the Club are never eager to discipline another member of the Club unless the conduct in question is clearly outside the bounds of accepted sexual deviance. Calls for Sen. Larry Craig to quit were immediate and loud.

Ensign, said a colleague, should “leave now so the Republican governor can appoint someone new who has time to get a leg up on holding the seat for the GOP.”

At first, Ensign's case seemed closer to that of Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter, who apologized, wife at his side, for his brush with the "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey and held on—although he could have a rough reelection race in 2010. Now Ensign’s standing is shakier. On the heels of his cameo at the Capitol on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, asked whether Ensign should stay and run for reelection, replied brusquely "Sen. Ensign will have to speak to those issues himself" before walking away from reporters. . . .

Even the strategy of muscling Ensign out of the Senate is far from surefire, as Margaret notes:

While cool heads in the GOP would like Ensign to disappear, the part of the plan where the Republican governor appoints a successor is complicated by the fact that Nevada’s current governor is a media circus all his own. Just last week, a court ruled that the lawsuit filed by a cocktail waitress against [DWT fave] Gov. Jim Gibbons for hitting her outside a Las Vegas nightclub could go forward. Gibbons' wife is suing him for a divorce that gets nastier by the day.

Records came out recently showing that Gibbons had texted a woman not his wife 800 times over six weeks on a state cellphone. He arrives at his office mid-morning, if at all, calls meetings he doesn't show up for, and is ignoring his state's economic freefall now that tourism and housing have cratered.

Meanwhile, the Republican lieutenant governor, Brian Krolicki, is facing prosecution on felony charges that he mishandled a multibillion-dollar college-savings program when he was state treasurer. Unsurprisingly, the nonpartisan National Journal just ranked Nevada the second most dysfunctional state in the country after New York, where all state business has ground to a halt because the legislature locked itself out of the Capitol.

As they say, you can't make this stuff up.


UPDATE: Are ALL Republicans Prostitutes?

It would be wrong for Americans to just think of ugly old white men paying younger women (or boys) for sex when the topic of Republican whores comes up. Sure, the GOP has an astounding record of sexual hypocrisy to live down, but an even more serious problem is that they're all willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder, invariably Big Business. Today Politico broke the latest Republican pay-to-play scandal:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors.

Republican Party publicists Michelle Malkin and Erick Erickson are weeping. -- Howie

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We think of them as crazies, but you know, the people who wander in and out of the Family's lodge house on C Street have clout in D.C.

A lot of jaws dropped last night when Rachel Maddow presented this segment on the fundamentalist sect The Family, which turns out to provide a creepy linking factor between those princes of "family values" NV Sen. John Ensign and SC Gov. Mark Sanford -- and that curious, cranky, and crazy loon and noodge, OK Sen. Tom Coburn.

by Ken

Even though the Family isn't totally unknown, I know a lot of people whose eyes were popping out during this segment about its connections to the Ensign and Sanford scandals. Among Rachel's guests was Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone who actually infiltrated the Family and literally wrote the book on it, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, now out in paperback.

The Family, first published last year, is yet another of those books from recent years that are by all accounts utterly splendid, which I've forlornly added to the "must read" list that I know I'll never get to. By way of summary, Jeff posted the jacket copy on his blog when the book was published, in February 2008:

They are the Family—fundamentalism’s avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen, congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a “leadership led by God,” to be won not by force but through “quiet diplomacy.” Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls.

The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the Far Right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a “family” that thrives to this day. In public, they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of “biblical capitalism,” military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

Sharlet’s discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not “What do fundamentalists want?” but “What have they already done?”

With regard to the political connections popping out now, our esteemed colleague Marcy Wheeler has been exploring the Ensign and Sanford ties to the Family lodge house on C Street: "Did the Ensign Confrontation over His Affair Take Place at a 'Family' Gathering?" (June 19), "Did 'the Family' Force Sanford to Ditch His Mistress?" (June 24), and "WaPo Discovers C Street" (June 26).

The infamous Family house on C Street

SATURDAY UPDATE: RACHEL DOES ANOTHER SEGMENT
ON THE FAMILY, WITH JEFF SHARLET RETURNING

And it turns out that what I've been calling the Family's C Street "lodge house" is actually . . . a church!

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