Which 2 House Dems Were Eager To Go On Record As Anti-Gay-- And Which Republicans Wanted To Be On Record As Less Bigoted Towards The LGBT Community?

Congress' ugliest Member, Dan Lipinski (D-IL) will never be able to use gay panic as a defense for his vicious homophobia

Everyone was cheering this week when 4 conservative Democratic senators, Claire McCaskill (MO), Mark Warner (VA), John Tester (MT) and Mark Begich (AK), [UPDATE: and Kay Hagan (NC)] finally came up, tepidly, with the courage to come out in favor of marriage equality. That's nice. I wish they weren't so late to the party. Even Rob Portman (R-OH) came first. Needless to say, none of the GOP congressional closet cases-- Lindsey Graham (SC), Tim Scott (SC) and Miss McConnell (KY) in the Senate and only-god-knows how many in the House-- are supporting marriage equality. Many of them, take Patrick McHenry (NC), Aaron Schock (IL) and Trent Franks (AZ) for example, are virulently opposed, hoping that they can hide behind a policy of steadfast homophobia without anyone back home remarking on the grotesque hypocrisy. There are only 9 House Republicans who don't have a zero lifetime ProgressivePunch score on crucial LGBT roll calls: libertarians Justin Amash (MI) and Jimmy Duncan (TN), mainstream conservatives Richard Hanna (NY), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), Jim Sensenbrenner (WI) and Mario Diaz-Balart (FL), and libertarian-leaning teabaggers Jason Chaffetz (UT), Tom McClintock (CA), and John Campbell (CA). None of them have remotely pro-gay records. But none have zeroes like the rest of the House Republicans.

Now I'm wondering how many libertarian-oriented Republicans in Congress are ready to just tell their Establishment colleagues-- if not the religionist nuts in the caucus-- to just leave it alone and stop inserting Big Government into people's private lives. Indiana Republican Todd Young doesn't ever step out of line. He's the ultimate dull backbencher who does whatever he's told by the leadership in the hope that no one ever notices him and tries to take away his cushy new job. This year his ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is a nice round ZERO. A former Heritage Foundation staffer, rocking boats is not what Todd Young does. So it was with some surprise that he actually spoke up on gay marriage this week-- and not in the usual homophobic way most Indiana Republican elected officials do. Explaining that it may not be appropriate for government to sanction marriage-- gay or straight-- in the first place, he insists that his priority remains addressing the nation's budget issues-- he's an Austerity freak-- as opposed to social issues like same-sex marriage. "It's my hope that we would leave these things to the states rather than one side prevailing over another. We'll see if that is exactly what the law says. It's the Supreme Court's job to decide what in fact our fundamental law, the Constitution, requires. Of course all of us will abide by that decision." He almost sounds like Robert Reich.

We’re still legislating and regulating private morality, while at the same time ignoring the much larger crisis of public morality in America.

...The new House Republican budget gets a big chunk of its savings from programs designed to help poor kids. The budget sequester already in effect takes aim at programs like Head Start, designed to improve the life chances of disadvantaged children.

Meanwhile, the morality brigade continues to battle same-sex marriage.

Despite the Supreme Court’s willingness to consider the constitutionality of California’s ban, no one should assume a majority of the justices will strike it down. The Court could just as easily decide the issue is up to the states, or strike down California’s law while allowing other states to continue their bans.

Conservative moralists don’t want women to have control over their bodies or same-sex couples to marry, but they don’t give a hoot about billionaires taking over our democracy for personal gain or big bankers taking over our economy.

Yet these violations of public morality are far more dangerous to our society because they undermine the public trust that’s essential to both our democracy and economy.

...Why doesn’t the morality brigade complain about the rampant greed on the Street that’s already brought the economy to its knees, wiping out the savings of millions of Americans and subjecting countless others to joblessness and insecurity-- and seems set on doing it again?

What people do in their bedrooms shouldn’t be the public’s business. Women should have rights over their own bodies. Same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

But what powerful people do in their boardrooms is the public’s business. Our democracy needs to be protected from the depredations of big money. Our economy needs to be guarded against the excesses of too-big-to-fail banks.

With most Americans supporting marriage equality-- and a plurality of Republicans under the age of 50 backing it-- GOP legislators have to figure out how to pivot on the issue before they look even more out of touch with the zeitgeist than usual. I suspect more and more Republicans are looking towards Rand Paul (R-KY) for guidance on this kind of thing-- and he's tap dancing.

In recent years, Senator Rand Paul has called for abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service. He’s urged an audit of the Federal Reserve. He’s questioned the constitutionality of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

He’s even suggested there’s a risk Americans could soon become like Germans of the “Weimar Republic in 1923” and need wheelbarrows full of money to buy groceries because of hyperinflation triggered by excessive debt. Adolf Hitler, Paul warned, gained power as a result.

“We’re on that road, if we’re not careful,” he said during an April 2010 campaign stop.

Now that he’s considered a possible Republican candidate for president in 2016, Paul isn’t emphasizing any of that... Paul says he’d like to see marriage eliminated from tax and insurance laws. Instead, he’d promote the use of contracts between adults as the marital bond for legal and tax purposes.

“I don’t want the government promoting something I don’t believe in,” Paul, who supports the religious definition of marriage between a man and a woman, said during a March 24 Fox News interview. “But I also don’t mind if the government tries to be neutral on the issue.”

The most recent vote regarding the LGBT community in the House was a failed amendment to the Violence Against Women Act offered by Washington homophobe Cathy McMorris Rodgers on February 28. She tried to would strip the bill's protections for American Indians, immigrants, and members of the LGBT community from the anti-domestic violence bill. Sixty Republicans and all but two Democrats--vicious homophobes Dan Lipinski (IL) and Mike McIntyre NC)-- teamed up to block McMorris Rodgers' amendment. It went down to defeat 166-257. The aforementioned Todd Young voted for it, as did Boehner's leadership team-- Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA), Whip Kevin McCarthy (CA), Conference Chair McMorris Rodgers (WA), Conference Vice Chair Lynn Jenkins (KS), Conference Secretary Virginia Foxx (NC), Policy Chair Jim Lankford (OK), NRCC Chair Greg Walden (OR) and committee chairs Fred Upton (MI), Paul Ryan (WI), Buck McKeon (CA), Frank Lucas (OK), Hal Rogers (KY), John Kline (MN), Jeb Hensarling (TX), Mike Rogers (MI), Mike McCaul (TX), Ed Royce (CA), Goodlatte (VA), Pete Sessions (TX), Lamar Smith (TX), Sam Graves (MO), Bill Shuster (PA), and Jeff Miller (FL). The only members of Team Boehner voting with the Democrats were Darrell Issa (CA), closet case Dave Camp (MI) and Doc Hastings (WA). Another Republican closet case who, uncharacteristically, voted NO, was Patrick McHenry (NC).

Why Didn't The Democrats Pass Gun Control Legislation When They Took Over Congress?

Bad news for the NRA: Baca, Bloomberg, McLeod

74% of NRA members say there should be background checks before anyone is able to buy a gun. But the Republican congressional leadership sent out their most junior-- and only female-- member, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) to tell the media that the GOP will stop any attempts to pass any kind of meaningful gun control legislation. As we saw Friday, the NRA has almost every single House Republican on their payroll. And they pay off enough Blue Dogs and New Dems so that the efforts to derail legislation appears "bipartisan."

"We need to find out what happened and what drove this individual to this place," McMorris Rodgers said. "I think we have to be careful about new-- suggesting new gun laws. We need to look at what drives a crazy person to do these kind of actions and make sure that we’re enforcing the laws that are currently on the books. And yes, definitely, we need to do everything possible to make sure that something like this never happens again."

I hope Ms Rodgers gets to the bottom of what drives crazy people. I'd suggest she begin by delving into the minds of some of her colleagues, like Allen West (FL), Steve King (IA), Louie Gohmert (TX), Michele Bachmann (MN) and Virginia Foxx (NC). But she needs to understand that if West, King, Gohmert, Bachmann and Foxx finally explode into a frenzy of violence, if they have kitchen knives or scissors, there's a good chance they'll do less damage than if they have guns. (Bear in mind that when the Gambino Crime Family's congressman, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm of Staten Island, had his first one-on-one-- and reportedly his last one-on-one-- with Speaker Boehner, he suggested that Boehner allow congressmembers to pack heart on the House floor. Boehner, who is well acquainted with West, King, Gohmert, Bachmann and Foxx, demurred.)

When the Democrats took over control of Congress in 2007 Carolyn McCarthy's legislation to reinstate the Assault Weapons ban (which had expired on March 2, 2004) had already been introduced. The Republican House leadership had already killed her bill twice by bottling it up in the Judiciary Committee, where it died. The first time she introduced it (2003), there were 111 co-sponsors, 109 Democrats and 2 Republicans (and, ominously, non of the Southern Blue Dogs). McCarthy tried again in 2005, this time with 94 co-sponsors, all Democrats, no Republicans and, again, no Southern Blue Dogs.

But when she introduced the bill on February 13, 2007, it wasn't Denny Hastert and Tom DeLay and John Boehner running the show any longer. It was Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. The committee chairs were no longer all reactionary Republicans owned by the NRA. They were all Democrats, many of whom were long-standing NRA foes. But this time-- when the bill could obviously pass-- there were only 67 co-sponsors, only Democrats and only Members who actually wanted to pass the bill or look like they wanted to pass the bill to their constituents. Rahm Emanuel was still a sponsor, although last summer Jake Tapper reported the dual role-- like in duplicitous-- he tends to play on things like this.

On February 25, (2009) Jim Messina, Emanuel's deputy, walked into his boss's office to inform him of Holder's latest 'gaffe.' At a press conference earlier that day, Holder had told reporters that the administration would push to reinstate the assault-weapons ban, which had expired in 2004. The comments roused the powerful gun lobby and its water carriers on Capitol Hill. 'Senators to Attorney General: Stay Away from Our Guns' read a press release issued by Senator Max Baucus of Montana-a Democrat, no less.

"Emanuel was furious. He slammed his desk and cursed the attorney general. Holder was only repeating a position Obama had expressed during the campaign, but that was before the White House needed the backing of pro-gun Democrats from red states for their domestic agenda. The chief of staff sent word to Justice that Holder needed to 'shut the fuck up' on guns…"

The back story on this is important. Emanuel, as a congressman who chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (and as such helped recapture the House) came to understand that for many Democratic members of Congress is swing districts, supporting gun control was a liability. The "majority makers," as then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi came to call them, were often from rural or blue collar districts where the NRA was active.

But, regardless of Rahm's games, not only were there no Republicans and no Southern Blue Dogs, someone important dropped out. Steny Hoyer had signed on-- reluctantly-- as a cosponsor in 2003 and 2005. But in 2007... no Steny.

Steny had something more important in mind than passing an Assault Weapons Ban-- protecting Blue Dogs. A Judiciary Committee staffer told me that a decision was made by the whole leadership-- Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn, the DCCC to kill the bill in the Judiciary Committee, the same way the Republicans had. They said they couldn't afford to force Blue Dogs into voting on something that would kill their chances to be reelected. And that's why we don't have any gun control. McCarthy is going to try again and, she said, "the gloves are off." And she was talking about her attitude towards President Obama! And she had already informed the White House before the election about it. Speaking to Chief of Staff Jack Lew, she said, "I know the president is going through an election and I’m telling you after the election I’m coming out full force" and that if Democrats were going to be "embarrassed" so be it.

Embarrassing the White House, McCarthy said, meant building a large-scale public campaign to ban assault weapons. She pledged to continue to work with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others to build support for her cause.

“I want to talk to the White House. I know that they can’t give me an answer tonight, but I want to know what they’re going to do. I need to know what they’re going to do.”

Hoyer may want to save Blue Dogs-- the vast majority of them were defeated in 2010 and this year anyway-- but Mayor Bloomberg has them in his sites. No one thought there was any chance Blue Dog-- and gun nut/NRA patsy-- Joe Baca could possibly be defeated by another Democrat, Gloria McLeod. A week before the election, the race was on no one's radar. And then Independence USA PAC, entirely financed by Bloomberg (around $10,000,000 this year), dropped over $3,000,000 into the district-- in one week. And that was the end of Joe Baca. A safe Democratic seat, Baca moved there to be safer. Instead, he wound up losing to gun control supporter McLeod, 72,652 (56%) to 57,304 (44%). Bloomberg's PAC also spent $440,000 to defeat gun freak and teabagger Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY). Targeting Blue Dogs and teabaggers... what's not to like?

Saturday, House Democratic Caucus Chair, John Larson (D-CT) sent a letter to his colleagues asking them to get real on gun legislation. It's worth reading-- and supporting:

Yesterday our hearts were broken as we witnessed one of the worst tragedies in the history of Connecticut. The children and teachers whose lives were taken are in our thoughts and prayers and their families deserve space and privacy. They, along with the staff, first responders, and the community of Newtown deserve our continued support and prayers through this most difficult time. As a parent, the unspeakable fear has happened. May God help all those families get through.

President Obama is right. Friday was a day of mourning, but the time to act is now upon us. To do nothing in the face of continuous assaults on our children is to be complicit in those assaults. There may not be a single cure-all for the violence in our nation, however we must start the process and begin the deeper and longer conversations that need to take place. Politics be damned. Of the 12 deadliest shootings in our nation’s history, half of them have happened in the last five years. And there is not a single person in America who doesn’t fear it will happen again. It’s time we recognize the danger and address it.

It’s time for Members of Congress to act! Congress should be prepared to vote on requiring background checks for all gun sales, closing the terrorist watch list loopholes, and banning assault weapons and high capacity clips. Those measures don’t solve all our problems, but they’re a start. We also need to focus on our mental health care system. We need to support a better process for families and friends to share their concerns and fears with authorities about people’s mental status, and begin to invest in the human infrastructure needed for effective prevention programs that create healthy children. The pattern is clear- action must be taken. To do nothing in the face of pending disaster is to be complicit. It’s time to act. It’s time to vote.

House Leadership Battles Heat Up-- Ryan's proxy Battle Against Boehner

A bloodletting inside the Democratic caucus was averted when Nancy Pelosi announced she was staying on as Democratic Leader even as Steny Hoyer and Debbie Wasserman Schultz agreed to a path for the psychotically ambitious Wasserman Schultz to become The First Jewish Speaker. According to the pact, he's next in line to Pelosi-- as progressives have dreaded-- and she skips over Jim Clyburn into some custom-built, specially-created Debbie position. And Absolute Corruption is institutionalized to the point where the Republican caucus won't be any worse than the Democratic caucus. Meanwhile, a senior progressive Member told me that if Hoyer ever becomes Speaker, he'll run every single bill through K Street, let his lobbyist whores rewrite them and that nothing of any consequence will ever happen in the House of Representatives. Sounds horrible, huh? Wasserman Schultz is even sleazier!

Meanwhile, a slow-burning war is breaking out in a leadership battle today on the other side of the aisle-- a proxy war between Boehner and Ryan featuring vaguely mainstream conservative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and off-the-rails psychopath extremist Tom Price (R-GA). Ostensibly it's for the House GOP's #4 position, the Conference Chair.

Boehner is officially neutral but privately supporting McMorris Rodgers. Paul Ryan, the returning chairman of the Budget Committee whose profile rose enormously during his vice presidential run, is asking colleagues to back Price.

McMorris Rodgers is the highest ranked woman in the House Republican conference, and a loyal leadership ally who has earned their trust as the conference’s vice-chair. A surrogate for Mitt Romney’s presidential run, she isn’t known as a hard-line ideologue but has cultivated a conservative voting record in recent years.

Price, meanwhile, is the favorite of the GOP’s conservative wing. A former chairman of the deeply conservative Republican Study Committee, he has been backed by outgoing conference chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX), who is expected to chair the Banking Committee next year.

Those who support McMorris Rodgers say she’s in good shape to win.

On Tuesday morning, Ryan sent out a “dear colleague” letter building support for Price: “I am asking you to join me in supporting Congressman Tom Price to be our next Chairman of the House Republican Conference,” he wrote, calling Price “uniquely qualified for the job” and noting that he was “instrumental in drafting our House Republican budget.”

“No one will work harder than Congressman Price at building a strong and compelling communications and policy strategy that reflects the will of our membership and the needs of the nation,” Ryan wrote.

The GOP aide disputed a key part of the case for Price-- that he’s more conservative. “That dog’s not hunting,” the staffer said. “If you actually look at the voting records of Price and McMorris Rodgers there’s not much difference there.”

Comparing voting records of Republicans is really whistling in the wind. They all vote so overwhelmingly in absolute lockstep that there is truly almost no difference between any of them, save the tiny libertarian contingent. Tom Price, more a radical than a conservative, has a 2.10 lifetime ProgressivePunch score on crucial roll calls. 2.10 out of 100 is pretty right wing, exactly tied, in fact, with another fringe secessionist and racist pig, Joe "You Lie" Wilson of South Carolina. As for McMorris Rodgers being less right-wing... well, if you want to split hairs, her score is 2.36, exactly tied with Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the Republican Study Group, which is, ideologically, to the GOP something like what the Schutzstaffel was to the Nazi Party in pre-War Germany. Why don't we just call it a draw and hope the ceiling caves in on all their heads today?

The only race that I'm really interested in pits progressive icon Barbara Lee against corrupt New Dem chairman and Queens County Party Boss Joe Crowley, who spread around over $2 million hoping to buy the post from easy-to-bribe colleagues. But I don't think that election will be for another week.

Is Grover Norquist What's Wrong With America?

Few people outside of central Florida's 24nd congressional district have ever heard of Congresswoman Sandy Adams, a doctrinaire right-wing fanatic and member of the House Tea Party caucus. She's in Washington to vote against everything... except for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. No list of the worst Members of Congress would be complete without her-- and last week, her constituents let her know they've been watching her dismal performance. Blue America's first endorsement for the 2012 cycle went to Nick Ruiz, a former Green Party candidate who joined the Democratic Party and is now mounting a serious progressive campaign against Adams. He wasn't at Adams' acrimonious town hall meeting in Port Orange Thursday night but he told us that her ideological extremism has been bad for the district.

"Our congressional district, like most of America, is made of hard-working people that need government to work for them. Most citizens are not responding favorably to ideologues like Sandy Adams because the Republican plans Sandy presents don't help most people. However, her plans fit real well for the upper 1% of Americans she seems to know so well. Our district rejects such a narrow prescription for America-- and I am glad to bring that voice to Capitol Hill in 2012."

Adams is like a zombie who endlessly repeats right-wing talking points. Rather than participating in discussions of problem solving with her constituents, she parrots mindless focus-group tested Boehnerisms like "I don't believe we have a tax problem. We have a spending problem" and peppers her pronouncements with charged anti-government, class warfare phrases straight from Fox and Limbaugh like "failed stimulus," "job-killing taxes," and "government takeover of health care." And she's far from alone. Her town hall meeting in Port Orange could have been basically anywhere in the country where a teabagger was elected last year. This week, the Washington Post took a look at how Democrats are striking back against the zombie-ism that has infected the Republicans in Washington. The Post story featured another mindless teabagger, this one from Illinois, Randy Hultgren. He tried vomiting out the same catch phrases Adams had. His constituents weren't amused.

“We have clear information that... tax cuts, especially to the super rich, has not increased any more jobs,” one man told him. “I want to know under what conditions you would be willing to consider increasing taxes, especially on those who can afford it?"

“I just have one question for you tonight,” said another. “Did you sign Grover Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes?”-- referring to the promise that has been signed by most congressional Republicans, including Hultgren.

“Don’t you have the confidence in your own ability in Congress to make up your own mind? You need Grover Norquist to tell you?” the man continued.

It is a scene that has been repeated at town hall meetings across the country this August as Democrats make a concerted effort to use this month’s congressional recess to change a national narrative on taxes.

For years, it has been Republicans who have wanted to talk about the issue, winning elections promising not to let government take more from voters.

But since the showdown over raising the debt ceiling, Democrats have been unusually eager to embrace tax increases, gambling that voters will see the Republican refusal to consider higher taxes for the wealthy as recalcitrant and out-of-touch.

Voters are starting to wake up to this everywhere in the country. A random letter to the editor yesterday in Spokane's Spokesman-Review:

Cathy McMorris Rodgers has proved that she is nothing more than a puppet dancing on strings. Those strings are being pulled by the leadership of the tea party. They include people like David and Charles Koch, oil billionaires who fund many of the radical right wing’s unscrupulous activities that allow them to accumulate more wealth.

They also include Grover Norquist, who through his signed pledges forces politicians into a corner and makes it impossible for them to vote in the best interest of the country as a whole or think on their own. (Norquist was also tied to the Jack Abramoff money laundering  scandal.)

Tim Phillips is also a tea party leader who years ago was paid $380,000 to “mobilize religious leaders and pro-family groups” to push energy deregulation in Congress that soon led to an energy crisis and economic meltdown. Sound familiar? Are these wealthy individuals the people you want your representative answering to? Do they identify with the majority of people in our district?

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, start doing the job you were elected to do. Represent the people of your district and not the wealthy elite.

John C. Eagle

Last week Warren Buffett's NY Times Op-Ed, Stop Coddling The Super-Rich served as a wake-up call to many who accepted the right-wing ideology being spouted by tools like Adams in Florida, Hultgren in Illinois and McMorris Rodgers in Washington. It sets up a debate between those who embrace Grover Norquist's goal of shrinking the government (and drowning it in a bathtub) and those who feel there is a robust and crucial role for government to play in balancing the immense power of wealth against the greater good of society.

Less than half a dozen Republicans in Congress have refused to sign Norquist's anti-government pledge. Norquist is basically a sleazy lobbyist, a crony of Jack Abramoff's who managed to get away without a prison sentence. He takes around a quarter million dollars a year from the Republican Party front group, Americans for Tax Reform, and also works as a free-lance lobbyist, pushing every sort of crooked operation near and dear to right-wing extremists' hearts, from stealing from American Indians to overthrowing foreign governments that put their people's interests before corporate interests. A notorious closet case-- and member of the board of the self-loathing anti-gay gay group, GOProud-- Norquist is one of the primary behind the scene's string pullers who has turned the Republican Party into a dysfunctional, treasonous mess that is threatening the social cohesion of the United States while worthless predators, like Norquist and his followers, enrich themselves.

The Political Class-- Regardless Of Party-- Knows One Thing Fer Sure: Their Shit Don't Stink

Very different types of political whores

And you'd better not forget it. Some things transcend partisan ID, political party, ideology and the rest, not the least of which is the class solidarity of the stinking Inside the Beltway elite. Alan Grayson didn't say they should all be lined up against a wall and shot; he probably wouldn't even agree with that as an excellent way to help get the country back on a good footing-- especially because there actually are some good one in the lot. But one of those good ones is decidedly not Linda Robertson.

Inside the Beltway hacks-- even some relatively good ones, policy-wise, are all over Grayson for referring to Robertson, a lobbyist recently hired as a public relations operative (or lobbyist) for the Federal Reserve, as "a K Street whore." None of the outraged and offended congressmembers-- who realize a charge like this is an affront to all of their self-proclaimed senses of dignity-- cares to discuss the substance of the claim. But she was, after all, the head of Enron's lobbying office-- a position that defines the word "whore."

The characterization is a little too close for comfort for almost any member of Congress, since so many of them are whores as well, taking immense sums of money from the very corporations on whose interests they are legislating. Hence the outrage over Grayson's plainspoken declaration. Robertson's current job is to paint a rosy picture of an institution, the Fed, at the heart of the near collapse of the American financial structure. A former close associate of Wall Street shill Lawrence Summers and of bankster Robert Rubin, Robertson was already blackballed for a job at Treasury because the Obama Administration was still trying to persuade people (and itself) that they didn't hire lobbyists.

Now, you might ask, are all lobbyists whores? Well, maybe not a lobbyist for the Society for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or a lobbyist for a firm urging the beating of swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks-- but that's not the kind of lobbyist Robertson has ever been. Pure and simple, Grayson hit that nail on the head: she's always been a whore. Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) took Grayson's remark quite personally-- and for good reason. Shrieking that Grayson "is out of control"-- one of the reasons why so many Americans love him-- she didn't mention that she sits on the Committee on Natural Resources (and it's subcommittee on water and power) and has solicited immense sums of money (thinly veiled bribes) from forest products companies, oil and gas companies, and electric utilities and, coincidentally, I'm sure, always votes in their interests and against the public interest. And if people start calling lobbyists like Linda Robertson whores, how long before they start realizing that the Honorable Congresswoman from Spokane is also a whore-- as are almost all of her colleagues.

Of course it isn't only corrupt Republicans who found Grayson's candid assessment a little too close for comfort. The king of Democratic Party congressional whores, the Honorable Steny Hoyer, called the remark "inappropriate and unfair." Steny's office once asked me to interview him-- it was when he was running for Majority Leader and noticed I was far from a fan of his rival, Jack Murtha (another corrupt disgrace)-- and only asked I observe one ground rule. "Please don't call him a shill or a whore." Ron Paul's legions, on the other hand, knew exactly what Grayson was talking about. If you don't know about K Street whores, may I suggest you read a fantastic book by Ken Silverstein, Turkmeniscam, the exposé on the relationship between lobbyists and members of Congress and those looking to buy congressional support.

I might add that the Blue America ActBlue page, Getting Grayson's Back, is still open.

MEET CATHY McMORRIS, A RIGHT WING EXTREMIST IN WASHINGTON, EXPERT IN COVERING UP FOR REPUBLICAN SEXUAL PREDATORS

A couple weeks ago I persuaded my pal AB to tell us a little about the remarkable Democrat running for Congress in Washington's 5th CD, Peter Goldmark. Since then people have been asking why there wasn't much information about Peter's opponent, Cathy McMorris, one of the dozen most extreme right wing members of Congress. Because McMorris had a role in covering up for Washington's most notorious sexual child molester, her close friend and colleague, Jim West, I asked AB to give us the whole Cathy McMorris story and show how neatly it ties in with the Republican cover-up of the Mark Foley scandal. Here's the report:

The Republican values on parade as desperate Denny the Hastert flails about, trying to figure out which way is up, are a disgrace. Venality, financial corruption, ignorance and incompetence are bad enough. But this spectacle of national leaders so far gone in their sacrilegious cult of "it can't be all that evil if it serves my partisan political interests" as to have lost their basic human decency, is a horror. 

This isn't the first time the Republican leadership has been caught in a pedophile cover-up. Two years ago this very situation exploded in eastern Washington when it came out that his Republican colleagues had twiddled their fingers for 15 years while out of control sexual predator Jim West used his political clout to hunt down boys right in there front of them. 

Lucky for the GOPsters, the local Roman Catholic diocese was in the midst of an even more sordid pedophilia scandal at the time and the Republicans managed to dodge the bullet. Wriggling out of responsibility for colluding in decades of child abuse worked out that time, so no wonder Denny "not one of our leading intellectuals" Hastert considered Mark Foley's abuse of power for the sexual pursuit of kids to be an insignificant matter. It's not like Foley was a brilliant lawyer, soldier and patriot who had irritated George Bush by winning a case before the US Supreme Court. The really bad people like that are kicked out of government in a matter of weeks.  

Congresswoman Cathy McMorris, who represents Washington's 5th District, is an old hand at the pedophile protection racket, having worked closely with Jim West for 20 years in the Legislature. Cathy also has one of the most disgusting voting records in Congress. She has spent her entire life in the pocket of her father and his corrupt political cronies, and they have led her down a sorry path.

That seems to be the case more often than not when Republicans indulge in what they like to think of as mentoring, counseling, helping, guiding, advising. And who is more deserving of this kind of special attention than young people? Just last week it came out that Sheriff Hairspray, aka "Congressman Frank Drebin" of the 8th District, had taken time off from his relentless pursuit of the Green River killer to bring a teenage prostitute into his home so that he might "have a positive effect" on her.  

Put a mother in charge of our House. Vote for a Democrat.


MENTORING: A VERY SPECIAL REPUBLICAN FAMILY VALUE

In 2004, the Democratic Party Empty-Suit-du-Jour running for Congress in Washington's 5th District faced the usual dilemma: what to talk about without taking a position on anything substantive? Democrats thought it would be a bright idea to sneer at Republican State Legislator Cathy McMorris because she had spent some of her hard luck childhood in a foreign country. Due to this idiotic xenophobia and other lame stunts on the part of what purports to be an alternative to Republican Party rule, McMorris trampled her opponent like a first growth cedar falling on snowman.

The McMorris family struggle to scrape out a living all over the Northwest, which despite manmade boundaries, has been a geographically, historically and culturally unified region for thousands of years, was an asset for Cathy. In fact her experience of the region was one of her few qualifications. Cathy had never held a full-time job; never had any job whatsoever that did not involve nepotism and the kindness of elderly Republican gentlemen; never managed a household or raised a family; and, except for 3 days a month for a year or so at the state university, while simultaneously serving in the state Legislature, she had had virtually no formal education.  


Born in 1969 on the west side of the Coastal Range, down in Salem; before long her folks had moved across the mountains to the Yakima Valley where they tried to make a go of it in the walnut farming business. But things didn't work out, and in 1974 Wayne and Corene McMorris set out again, this time to follow their dream to live off the grid and the family settled in the British Columbia wilderness with neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. This was followed by a series of moves around the Northwest. Nothing working out, until Wayne finally found his niche... in the bowels of the Stevens County Republican Party.

Cathy finished out her last two years of highschool at an all-white Christian academy and helped out in the family peach orchard and roadside stands. While managing the family fruit operation and teaching part-time at Cathy's school, Wayne began to build himself a powerbase in eastern Washington politics, schmoozing his way up the ranks of the Chamber of Commerce and the GOP. But, unlike kids who graduate from public highschools in the 5th District, Cathy didn't have an opportunity to pursue a higher education because she "graduated" from a tiny (4 teachers for 13 grades) unaccredited school. And, unfortunately for our Cathy, universities generally do not accept students from schools where the ideological has supplanted reality-based education, because it's just too hard for the kids to keep up. In fact, small unaccredited religious "colleges" only require an ability to pay and a willingness to unite with the sect's preferred doctrine. At the close of the only two years Cathy would ever live in eastern Washington full time, she packed up and moved to Florida to enroll in the most politically correct school in America, Pensacola Christian College.

PCC denounces Bob Jones University as too squishy.  PCC is for real Christians. Christians who don't smoke, don't drink, don't dance, don't listen to most music, don't watch most tv, don't use the Internet, don't see movies, and don't touch each other on pain of immediate expulsion.

After 4 years of hard work at McDonald's to pay for her cult-like indoctrination, Cathy was again faced with the lack of opportunity open to an ambitious and intelligent young person with only a pretend academic degree. Graduate schools and jobs that required a college degree were unavailable to her. The Republican Party on the other hand...

Luckily by the time the end of senior year rolled around, dad was a player.  Wayne, "Boss Hog" McMorris was now powerful enough in Republican circles to leverage a job for Cathy in the campaign of one of his political cronies. Cathy was 20 years old. And when Bob Morton shortly won election to the state legislature, she went down to Olympia as his aide. Bob was "impressed with her ability to look over reports." When he moved up the political ladder in 1994, he and Wayne strong-armed the party into appointing Cathy to Bob's seat in Olympia, plus, managed to suppress any primary opposition for an entire decade. Wayne McMorris and Bob Morton were the fairy godfathers of Cathy McMorris' political career and the first of a cadre of old and older men who have manipulated, directed and counseled her since childhood.

In the 1990's the Washington state Republican Party was in the throes of a nasty power struggle between the wingnut wing and the "moderate" wing represented by the McMorris clan. Yes, Cathy McMorris, the Congresswoman with the ugliest voting record in the House, is a mainstay of the left, or as we like to call it, the figleaf wing, of the Washington state GOP. Wayne won. The McMorris family purred along.

While Uncle Bob Morton and Wayne were off trying to pry baby brother Jeff McMorris from his dead end job as assistant manager of the Spokane outlet of the Laser Quest! gaming franchise and launch him on to the gravy train of the legislative assistant/right-wing think tank circuit, Cathy was cementing her relationships with two more older members of the eastern Washington Republican establishment: George "term limits for everybody except me" Nethercutt and infamous Republican pedophile, Jim West. And honing her ability to bring home the bucks. She's got a knack for helping donors forget what it is the Republican Party really stands for. Like Mark Foley, Cathy turned into an ace fundraiser and was likewise rewarded with important positions in the party. It's not integrity or legislative ability that propelled them up the ranks, it's all about the money, the second most important Republican value.

When GOPsters deluded themselves into thinking George Nethercutt could win statewide office and forced him to give up his seat in the House, Wayne and the "mentors" anointed Cathy to his old position. She was soon swept up in the corruption and self-dealing of her new wise men, Doc Hastings, Richard Pombo, Ted Stevens, Denny Hastert and the whole crew of future felons of America. Repudiating the Christian principles of her youth, Cathy got in bed with the non-non-smoking, non-non-drinking, non-non-pre-maritial/post-maritial/extra-marital serial-sex-offenders, the prevaricators and law-breakers, the whoring, cursing, dancing gambling fools and significant campaign contributors: Tom Delay ($5,000), Duke Cunningham ($1,000), Bob Ney ($2,500), and leading pedophile protectors Roy Blunt ($13,000) and John Boehner ($11,241). In return Cathy does everything they tell her to do, up to and including shielding a child predator. Her career depends on it. Not to mention Wayne's career. And Jeff's career.

Cathy is Republican Party family values all the way. She openly defends legalized bribery and the corporate theft of public funds. She wants to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Act even though it will turn our country into a sewer. She says things aren't so bad in Iraq and is willing to let more of other peoples' kids get killed and maimed because it would look bad for Republicans to look responsible for that catastrophe. Saying you take responsibility is a Republican family value.  Actually taking responsibility is not.  

She votes for irresponsible deficit spending and draconian bankruptcy laws. She ignores the fact that her district is in the Economic Intensive Care Unit. She wants to prevent regular people from obtaining justice in the courts from greedy corporations that have wronged them. She cannot and will not pressure the federal government to clean up their decades of nuclear waste oozing towards the Columbia River water table; heartbreak dead ahead.  

Now she's got herself mixed up in her second GOPedophile scandal in less than two years. The deal with serial Congressional page stalker Mark Foley and the leadership of the House of Representatives is a familiar one to Cathy.  She spent 15 years as an insider in the state legislature where she had plenty of practice in Republican Party standard operating procedure of ignoring/enabling child sexual abuse. She was not alone.

McMorris and the rest of the Republican political establishment knew Jim West was a child sexual predator for 15 years and looked the other way, even as he cynically pushed a raft of vicious homophobic bills through the legislature. In fact plenty of Republicans in eastern Washington had known since the 1970's, when West and the fellow law enforcement officers in his molesters club would openly rip the pants off boy scouts. Like Foley, West posed as a mentor to young people. He used public money to take "troubled juveniles" for week-long "leadership" experience. He used his power as a Sheriff's Deputy to fuel his perversions, fighting the War on Drugs by searching for marijuana down the front of a boy's pants. Moving up to the state house meant more political power and authority which meant more opportunity to corrupt young people.

And his fellow Republicans knew it. Jim West was so confident his colleagues wouldn't say a word that he could "joke" about his own pedophilia right there in the Senate Chamber. In 1990 for instance, he made a pass at a teenager in front of the boy's own mother. Senator Pam Roach was initially horrified, but her fellow Republicans were able to convince her to do the right thing and let it pass. 

The GOP values only one thing: follow the leader. Loyalty is their sole criteria for distinguishing right from wrong.  Morality? Ethics? Obey the law? Basic human decency? That's just stuff to talk about when you're on TV.

West's crimes were only revealed to the public because the Spokane Spokesman-Review stumbled over them in the course of investigating the enormous pedophilia scandal that has since bankrupted the Spokane Catholic Church. (In 1986 the Bishop of Spokane was arrested by the Chicago police for choking a male prostitute, who had the priestly penis in mouth at the time; like Foley, Kolbe, West, et al, the prelate claimed he was "counselling." You see, like politicians, priests are very big on mentoring. The powers that be managed to keep this, and lots worse, hushed up until 2002.)

It is not known how many hundreds of children were sexually molested in the THIRTY YEARS West spent preying on kids with total impunity because his friends and political associates in the small world of the Washington state Republican Party were literally covering his ass. When public servants commit crimes, we are all implicated. That's why public servants who break the law are so much worse than regular criminals.

Cathy McMorris was so close to Jim West that he spoke of wanting to marry her; convenient. He thought she could enhance his political career by helping him conceal his criminal perversions. Why should she have objected to Mark Foley's unseemly interest in teenage boys when she had turned her head away for 20 years while her mentor and colleague Jim West was doing exactly the same thing?

She sold her soul and her autonomy and her reputation to these hoodlums. And they still disrespect her. In the closing weeks of a tight re-election campaign she only realized too late she could lose, Cathy was publicly humiliated by her own party when she had to find out about hundreds more layoffs at Edwards Air Force Base from the news. McMorris, who is a member of the Armed Services Committee no less, was not only helpless to stop it, she wasn't even informed of it. So much for clout.

It's not that Cathy is not interested in her constituents; she genuinely loves to chat and exchange small talk back in the district. What she's not interested in is representing their interests in Congress.

Cathy McMorris claims her political associates, her views and deeds, not to mention her failures to do the right thing, are representative of the electorate in the 5th district.  Cathy McMorris is wrong. The voters in the 5th District do not consider shielding sexual predators to be an appropriate price to pay for anything, much less to maintain the Republican Party in power. 

The metastasizing incompetence and criminality of the GOP nationwide has forced the traditionally ultra-conservative 5th District to re-evaluate its affectionate and protective feelings about Cathy McMorris the person, against the reprehensible deeds of Congresswoman McMorris, gang member.

Defend eastern Washington family values. Clean up Congress. Elect a Representative with integrity who can think for himself. Support Peter Goldmark.