I'm Being Sued Personally And So Is DownWithTyranny

I just got home from a couple of weeks in Southeast Asia on Tuesday and early Wednesday morning there's a rapping on my door. It's someone serving a 60 page summons. I have no time to read that but I skimmed enough of it to see that I'm one of dozens of people accused by Republican murderer Don Blankenship and that the charge is "weaponized defamation" and that he wants $12 billion dollars for destroying his Senate race. Presumably he was referring to these. Other defendants named included MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, the Daily Beast, both the NRCC and the DSCC, Dan Rather, Chris Hayes, Joy-Ann Reid, Breitbart News, Andrew Napolitano, the Associated Press, The Guardian, dozens of other people-- plus between 1 and 50 John and Jane Does. I think Mitch McConnell is being sued by him too. But not Trump; I wonder why not Trump, since it was Trump who caused Blankenship to lose the GOP primary. I have 21 days to respond.

This is what the Huntington Herald Dispatch published about the suit: "Former Massey Energy CEO and U.S. Senate candidate Don Blankenship on Thursday filed a lawsuit seeking at least $12 billion in damages from a variety of national news and political organizations, claiming they set out on a 'search and destroy' mission against his 2018 candidacy for the Senate. The lawsuit, filed in Mingo County Circuit Court, claimed the 'DC establishment swamp and the establishment media united ... to take out Mr. Blankenship' in his bid for election. He argued in the suit that repeated references about him in the media as a "convicted felon" as damaging his bid, even though he was not convicted of any felonies in relation to the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in Raleigh County in 2010 that killed 29 miners."

The lawsuit claims that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, instigated a clandestine campaign to damage Blankenship's candidacy and interfere in a federal election. He also accused McConnell of using his contacts in "the establishment media," Fox News in particular, to do McConnell's bidding.

Blankenship, who grew up in Mingo County and graduated from Matewan High School before entering Marshall University and graduating from there in 1972, was sentenced in 2016 for a misdemeanor conviction of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards at Upper Big Branch. He was acquitted of felonies that could have stretched his sentence to 30 years. He served a one-year prison term for the conviction.

In late 2017 he announced his Republican candidacy for the Senate position held by Democrat Joe Manchin, whom Blankenship has blamed for the charges against him.

Blankie spent $4,015,000 of his own money on the failed primary campaign. He did poorly:

• Patrick Morrisey- 47,571 (34.92%)
• Evan Jenkins- 39,888 (29.28%)
• Don Blankenship- 27,153 (19.93%)
• Tom Willis- 13,322 (9.78%)
• Bo Copley- 4,206 (3.09%)
• Jack Newbrough- 4,080 (3.0%)

Then he tried running on the Constitution Party. But the state's Court of Appeals, citing West Virginia's "sore loser" law, denied him ballot access.

What's this all have to do with me? Blankie is a total snowflake and he gets freaked out when anyone mentioned he served a year in prison and was responsible for killing 29 coal miners. He doesn't like people running videos like this:

Republican Party Front Group "Let Freedom Ring" Issues An FEC Complaint Against Blue America

Most Democrats are still in the suicidal defensive crouch they got into sometime late last summer. This weekend a friend sent me a note about the thinking of some of the big Democratic donors in regard to the 2012 elections. Some want to try to match Republican outside advertising efforts-- successfully led by career criminals like David Koch, Karl Rove and the U.S. Chamber's Republican Party partisan Tom Donohue-- in 2012 and those who insist the left, by its nature, lacks the resources to level the playing field and would be better served funding more permanent intellectual infrastructure rather than political advertising.

Erica Payne, one of the founders of the Democracy Alliance and, more recently, head of the Agenda Project, is warning that major Democratic donors are unlikely to write multimillion-dollar checks to fund ad campaigns in 2012 because of their experience the last time they did it, in 2004. Bush won despite their efforts, and many of the big donors were targeted for retribution by Bush's uber-politicized FEC and harassed with bogus charges of election-law violations.

The Blue America PAC isn't one of the big Democratic donors anyone is worried about. In all we've aggregated less than a million dollars per cycle. This year it was just over $900,000, for example. Nevertheless, we were routinely harassed by the FEC while Bush was in office, costing us thousands in legal expenses. And last week our attorney informed us that a right-wing extremist group, Let Freedom Ring, had filed what amounts to a frivolous nuisance suit against us. Let Freedom Ring's president, Colin Hanna, and counsel, Cleta Mitchell, both well-known right-wing Beltway crackpots, claim that Blue America's Independent Expenditure Committee coordinated activities with Nancy Pelosi. Although this isn't just untrue but patently absurd, it will cost of thousands of dollars to defend ourselves from the baseless accusations.

Since they were trying to sue us, I looked up Let Freedom Ring at wikipedia. It was just a stub:

'Let Freedom Ring, Inc.' is a Conservative think-tank that was set up in 2004 in the USA thanks to a $1 million donation from Dr John Templeton, Jr., President of the John Templeton Foundation. The organization seeks to promote the neo-conservative agenda led by President George W. Bush, and campaigns actively in favor of keeping troops in Iraq as part of the 'war on terror'. It claims that the war in Iraq was caused by Al Qaeda. "LFR" also claims to be a group standing against political attack ads, while at the same time maintaining that conservatives need to not be fazed by "'mud-slinging' coming from the left."

Let Freedom Ring was also involved in organizing the nationwide "Tea Party" protests on April 15 2009, in part by sending out robocalls to potential participants the day before.

Their suit claims we "engaged in the deliberate, willful and intentional violation of the [Federal Election Campaign] Act by specifically requesting that outside organizations make public communications in support of Democratic candidates for Congress." As best as I can tell, the only basis for their claim is that a couple of Inside the Beltway newspapers published a story that Pelosi was concerned that the Democrats were concerned that they were being crushed by outside spending and that they needed liberal groups "to do more-- and quickly." The suit claims Blue America Independent Expenditure Committee made its first buy on October 18, right around the time of the newspaper stories. Our Independent Expenditure Committee spent exactly $83,776.85 this year, on three races, one of which was in the Arizona Democratic primary in support of Randy Parraz ($20,315.00), a race Pelosi couldn't have been remotely interested in. Another was in the race in Alabama's Second Congressional District between Blue Dog Bobby Bright and Republican Martha Roby. We spent $48,364.15 opposing Bobby Bright, the candidate Pelosi was backing. And the third race was in support of Justin Coussoule, the progressive Democrat opposing John Boehner, to the tune of $15,097.70. The DCCC and the DNC made it clear that they had no interest in this race whatsoever. If Pelosi did, it would have taken a mind-reader to have known.

The rest of the money spent this cycle by Blue America went through the normal PAC, not that I.E. Committee, and it wasn't named in the suit. With three exceptions-- longtime Blue America friends Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva and Mary Jo Kilroy-- all expenditures were made on behalf of primary and general election candidates Pelosi either actively opposed or was uninterested in. The biggest amount, $22,958.00, was spent on TV ads for Marcy Winograd in her primary against Pelosi-backed Blue Dog Jane Harman. The second-largest amount, $13,284.00, was spent in support of Regina Thomas in her primary against Pelosi's candidate, John Barrow. Same story in Utah's Democratic primary, where Pelosi backed Blue Dog incumbent Jim Matheson and Blue America backed Claudia Wright. We also spent money on behalf of Billy Kennedy and Justin Coussoule, two races the DCCC, DNC and Pelosi expressed exactly zero interest in. The total from the PAC was $67,956.00. By way of comparison, two of the most dangerous of the right-wing super PACs, Rove's American Crossroads and the shady American Future Fund spent, respectively, $21,553,271.97 and $10,164,466.18 on Independent Expenditures-- and this was just through mid-October. As for Cleta Mitchell (who is Sharron Angle's and Christine O'Donnell's lawyer) and Colin Hanna, she's given over $43,650 to right-wing candidates and PACs since 1993-- every freak in the book from Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint and Rick Santorum to Bush, Coburn and of course Tom DeLay-- and he's given nearly $60,000 in the same period, again to all the most finge freaks in American politics-- from Allen West, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum to Star Parker, Pat Toomey and Joe Pitts.

In fact, the very independent expenditure that Let Freedom Rings cites as the one we somehow conspired with Pelosi on is this ad we ran against John Boehner-- and Nancy Pelosi!



So... if you'd like to help us meet this nasty challenge, please consider a donation to our PAC. Perhaps we can even turn the tables on these creeps for the nuisance nature of their suit.

Franken Is No Longer "Leading"-- He Won

Al Franken is as entitled to a seat and a vote in the U.S. Senate as either Mike Johanns (R-NE) or Jim Risch (R-ID), the only two Republican freshmen. It's been obvious for months that Coleman's RNC-financed frivolous law suits and challengers were just about preventing Franken from taking his seat, not about really contesting the election. The best explanation for what the Republican Party is doing was blurted out by Michele Bachmann supporter Jim Bendtsen from Anoka County just north of Minneapolis. He told USAToday that "he's willing to forgo a senator if it means slowing President Obama's agenda. 'I'm in favor of keeping Franken out of office as long as possible,' he says. 'The more votes Obama has at the federal level, the more damage I think he's going to do to America.'" That is the definition of unadulterated Republican obstructionism as preached by the slobbering three-headed god, Rush-Ann-Glenn they've all sold their souls to.

After a trial spanning nearly three months, Norm Coleman’s attempt to reverse Al Franken’s lead in the recount of the U.S. Senate election was soundly rejected today by a three-judge panel that dismissed the Republican’s lawsuit.

The judges swept away Coleman’s argument that the election and its aftermath were fraught with systemic errors that made the results invalid.

“The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately,” the panel said in its unanimous decision.

In rejecting Coleman’s arguments, the panel said the Republican essentially asked it to ignore Minnesota election requirements and adopt a more lenient standard allowing illegal absentee ballots to be counted.

The panel also rejected Coleman’s comparison of Senate election problems to those in the 2000 presidential race in Florida.

Unlike Florida, Minnesota has statewide standards for absentee voting that are “uniform and explicit and apply in every county and city,” the panel wrote.

It's simple; the court has ruled Franken won the most votes which, in a democracy, means he won the election. The airtight 68 page opinion is adamant that the election was fair, that it did not violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and that each county's adopted ballot counting rules was proper and in accordance with state and federal laws. It's is almost shocking at how completely it slaps down Coleman's spurious claims. The judges have declared that Franken is entitled to a certificate of election.

Coleman and the GOP want to protract this as long as they can, just to make it more difficult for Obama to overcome GOP de facto filibusters on his entire agenda. He has already announced he will appeal to the state Supreme Court. Governor Tim Pawlenty has vowed to allow Minnesota to go without a second senator for as long as the Republican Party is willing to finance challenges and lawsuits. It's clear that Minnesota voters should start a recall of Pawlenty.

After a statewide recount and seven-week trial, Franken stands 312 votes ahead. Franken actually gained more votes from the election challenge than Coleman, the candidate who brought it.

The state law Coleman sued under merely required three judges to determine who got the most votes and is therefore entitled to an election certificate. That critical certificate is on hold pending appeal, and GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty has hedged when asked if he'll deliver it after the state courts are done reviewing the case.

"The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the November 4, 2008 election was conducted fairly, impartially, and accurately," the judges wrote in their unanimous opinion. "There is no evidence of a systematic problem of disenfranchisement in the state's election system, including in its absentee-balloting procedures."

Even the Republican Party propagandist embedded on MSNBC, former right-wing congressman Joe Scarborough, is telling Coleman that he lost and it's time to give up the shameful obstructionism: "Norm... you lost... It's over Norm? OK? It's over."

Wednesday's Minnesota Independent has some bad news for Coleman: most voters think he should concede. And Pawlenty better be careful; 59% of Minnesota voters say he should sign Franken’s election certificate.

UPDATE: And I Hope The GOP Isn't Planning The Same Strategy Of Disruption For Tedisco

As the counting of paper ballots continues in NY-20, Scott Murphy continues to expand his lead. The crazed and desperate Tedisco, who was forced out of his local GOP leadership job, has even challenged the absentee ballot of NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, whose elevation to the Senate is what opened the seat he and Murphy have been vying for. Gillbrand and Murphy, unlike Tedisco, live in the district.