RNC Chair Michael Steele did the unthinkable. He tried to win elections for the GOP.

By trying to distance the GOP from the voluminous Rush Limbaugh, Steele attempted to do what any competent professional would do in his job. The vast majority of Americans think that Limbaugh is worse than anything you could ever scrape off of your shoe.

I've read that Steele already has backed down to the lunatics who have been captured into an orbit of Limbaugh. Planet Limbaugh has conquered the GOP. However, the Rushtroopers have scorched the ground of the GOP in the process.

Poor babies.

 

If you are unfamiliar with Dale Carpenter, he is a extreme right Republican who also is gay. He has gotten a lot of attention over the years by attacking and sabotaging the GLBT movement while pretend to fight for it. This year, some of us in the queer community have started fighting back against homohating queers like Carpenter who promote discrimination and violence against us by supporting the GOP and its most hateful candidates.

Some of us have deleted our Manhunt profiles in response to the revelation that one of the owners has been attacking and endangering us by supporting the Republican Party for years. Some activists have outed Mark Buse, chief of staff of viciously heterosexist Senator John "Keating Five" McCain.

Now, Carpenter has decided to throw a tantrum because people aren't going along with his bullshit anymore. (Hat tip to Wayne Besen.) Carpenter's exercise in narcissism had the ironic title, "Goodbye to the GLBT Movement."

A heterosexual supremacist like Carpenter provides the reader with some fine whine. (The bolding is mine to help illustrate a point farther down.)

Time and again gay conservatives have been called self-hating, treasonous, and selfish. It’s the worst vitriol against gay conservatives I’ve seen in fifteen years in this movement.

The co-founder of Manhunt was forced to resign from the company's Board of Directors because he dared to make a campaign contribution to John McCain, which started talk of a boycott against the company. People are free to boycott companies if they want to, but the fact that supporting McCain was seen as worthy of a boycott is deeply disturbing. The GLBT movement does not tolerate such dissent. What’s next, banning conservative columnists from gay newspapers?

The criticism of racist, misogynistic, heterosexual supremacist, AIDSphobic, and Christian supremacist bigots is dissent in the queer press, given how advertiser driven it is. It is dissent in self-loathing organizations like the Human Rights Campaign who have become so dependent on wealthy Republicans donors that they are too afraid to challenge GOP heterosexism in a substantial manner. Our movement has been hijacked by far right bigots like Carpenter, and they actually think they are entitled to their vastly disproportionate power.

They have got to be kidding.

I should note that Carpenter is employing a rhetorical ploy that originated with the Ku Klux Klan and was adopted later by other Christian Right hate groups. Carpenter actually is saying that it is intolerant to speak out against intolerance. Given that the GOP shares the same values as these hate groups, I'm hardly surprised that a fanatical Republican like Carpenter is using these tactics. However, it is important to point out the bullshit tactics that the extreme right uses to manipulate political discourse.

Carpenter always avoids a central fact that undermines his case. There is literally no way to support the GOP without promoting discrimination, violence, and death against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Carpenter's support for the GOP makes him share personal responsibility for every heterosexist hate crime, for all instances where people are fired or passed over for promotions because they are queer, and for every time a young person is thrown out of her or his home by heterosexist parents who decide to hate their own child for being queer. Carpenter's support for the Republican Party also makes him personally responsible for the overwhelming majority of AIDS deaths in this country. This is equally true of every Republican. These are unpleasant facts, but they are facts we really need to face as a queer community.

Carpenter also wants to exclude transgender queers from a movement they have participated in long before Carpenter started working against it.

True, we share same-sex attraction. But even that has been diluted with the addition of transgendered causes. Indeed, the insistence of movement leaders on “T” inclusion even at the cost of passing pro-gay legislation has only highlighted major conceptual differences between gay conservatives and leftists about what exactly we’re fighting for.

Carpenter also shows his contempt for women. Opposing the fundamental right of women to choose on abortion is misogynistic. Also, Carpenter's position is hypocritical, given that he thinks gay, white, Christian men should fight only for themselves and everyone else can basically fuck themselves.

The gay left supports abortion and believes it is intimately tied to gay rights. Gay conservatives either oppose it or think it is simply not a gay issue.

A decent, honorable human being would support civil rights for everyone, rather than demand them exclusively for himself or herself.

Carpenter also inspires some hardy belly laughs by threatening to leave a movement he has been working to undermine and sabotage for years.

It is time for gay conservatives to declare independence from the GLBT movement. We’ll still make common cause at times. Gay conservatives will continue to fight government-sponsored discrimination.

Actually, they will continue to promote government sponsored discrimination by supporting the GOP and heterosexist candidates while launching shrill attacks against anyone who actually fights for queer liberation.

In the end, I suspect that this whole whineathon is an empty threat. Carpenter gets a lot of chances to work for his potpourri or prejudices by pretending to be part of the LGBT movement. I doubt that he will give it up just because he is getting some long overdue criticism for his reprehensible behavior.

I should also note that the name of the website that Carpenter posts on, "The Independent Gay Forum," is misleading. That certainly is not a site for political independents. It is a site for rabidly partisan Republicans who are on the extreme ideological right wing of the country, not just the queer community.

This is another common rightist distortion. They create misleading organizations among oppressed communities in our society, all called "independent." Never mind that these organizations are run by and participated in by people who are completely ideologically dependent on the views of people who have taught them to despise themselves merely for being who they naturally are.

 

Let's face it. Jesse Helms was an incredibly evil man. He was an uncompromisingly racist, sexist, and heterosexist bigot who did everything in his power to promote the spread of HIV in the queer community. Helms had absolutely no personal or public integrity whatsoever, being as much of a liar as he was a bigot. He also was a bought politician, doing whatever he could to please the tobacco companies and other corporate interests.

Now, Jesse Helms is dead.

If you want sympathy or false praise for that piece of garbage, you will have to go elsewhere. Helms deserved to die a lot younger than 86.

If you want to get an idea of how evil and bigoted the so-called "Heritage Foundation" is, read the quote from the article from their president on Helms.

Ed Feulner, president of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, hailed Helms as "one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century."

"Along with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, he helped establish the conservative movement and became a powerful voice for free markets and free people," Feulner wrote.

Free people, my ass.

 

This, from the 12/16/07 online edition of the New York Times:

With just weeks left before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8, Mr. Huckabee has climbed to near the top of a crowded Republican field. But he may have given his rivals an opening when he decried what he called “the Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality.” Writing last week in the journal Foreign Affairs, he said, “American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out.”

Perhaps sensing that Mr. Huckabee might have offended the core conservatives vital to securing a Republican nomination, Mr. Romney pounced.

“That’s an insult to the president, and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president,” Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said Sunday on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.”

In an earlier appearance in Humboldt, Iowa, Mr. Romney was even more scathing. “I can’t believe he’d say that,” he said. “I’m afraid he’s running for the wrong party.”

Romney wants to make it clear to GOP primary voters that he is Bush's biggest sycophant. But, Huckabee was quick to minimize any independence from Bush:

Mr. Huckabee, in a CNN appearance apparently added belatedly to his schedule, sought to explain. “I didn’t say the president was arrogant,” he said. “I said that the policies have been arrogant.”

Genuflecting to an incompetent, unelected tyrant is still the order of the day in the GOP.

How pathetic!

I found Marc Crispin Miller's excellent blog. I also was impressed when I saw him at a live speaking engagement a while back. He has been a tireless advocate on behalf of people disenfranchised by GOP election fraud and for restoring democracy to America.

"What's Wrong with the New York Times?" is a provocative title for one of his vlog entries. Of course, a 5:48 video cannot begin to discuss everything wrong with the Times and its rightist/pro-GOP bias. However, he does provide an excellent and disturbing example.

Crispin Miller also does an excellent job explaining robocalling and the difference between voter fraud and election fraud.

Almost every day, there is a new headline about Larry Craig. It's not like the media is looking for weird excuses to cover the story. Craig just keeps making noise. His doomed appeal of his conviction for a trivial crime and his factual statement that Romney “through him under the bus” is a calculated effort by Craig to keep his name in the media.

I don't think even a whackjob like Craig is arrogant or foolish enough to think he will ever restore his reputation in the GOP and get reelected to the Senate in a far-right state like Idaho.

If Craig wasn't so homophobic and sexphobic, I would feel sorry for him, given the terrible way the GOP has treated him over something so unimportant. But, we all know that he promoted the very attitudes that are pissing him off when he is the target.

But, does he know or care?

It really looks like he is going to use the “scandal” to hurt the GOP that has proven disloyal to him. You cannot blame Craig, but you can enjoy watching Craig's fellow homophobes and sexphobes alternate between whining and hiding.

Republicans are suddenly discovering the idea that politicians should keep their word when it comes to Larry Craig. Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, postured self-righteously:

"I think it is best for the U.S. Senate. I think it is best for his party that if he just keeps his word. He gave us his word that he would do something. He's backing out on us, and I don't think it is the right thing to do."

Compare this to Ensign's silence on Bush.

In his pre-war rhetoric, Bush continually promised the American people that he was pursuing diplomatic options with Iraq and that he wanted peace.

"I'm willing to give peace a chance to work," Bush said. "I want the United Nations to work. I want him to do what he said he would do. But for the sake of our future, now's the time. Now's the time."

(CNN.com 9/22/02)

We now know that Bush was determined to go to war with Iraq no matter what. This was a promise broken by Bush to get Congress and the American people to go along with a war resolution on Iraq, despite growing doubts about his lies on WMDs in Iraq and supposed links between mortal enemies, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Why are Republicans more upset by a relatively minor broken promise by Craig than a devastating broken promise by Bush?

The answers are homophobia and political offices that are for sale to the highest campaign contributors.

War profiteers own the politicians and much of the media (e.g., GE owns NBC and MSNBC). So, it is not surprising that little would be said of Bush's catastrophic broken promise.

Craig himself invokes little sympathy. Throughout his slimy political career, he promoted and reveled in the very heterosexist bigotry that is falling upon himself. He is getting a terrible taste of his own medicine.

The Washington Post has been a partisan Republican rag for years or even decades, but sometimes they take it to extreme levels. One case was today's coverage of U.S. District Judge John D. Bates' dismissal of the Plame lawsuit against corrupt members of the Bush regime.

The Post omitted critical information in order to create a false air of legitimacy to the ruling. The article acknowledged that the defendants in the case revealed Ms. Plame's then-undercover identity as a CIA agent, but conveniently neglected to mention that the identity of an undercover CIA business used to monitor weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East was revealed, in addition to the identities of agents and informants who had worked with Plame while she was under cover.

This is important given the grounds that Bates used in order to dismiss the case. Bates falsely claimed that the actions of the defendants were part of their duties as government officials.

From the Washington Post article:

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote.

"But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials," Bates said.

This is a flat-out lie.

Bates is perfectly aware of the fact that illegally revealing the identities of CIA agents and covert operations could not ever possibly be “within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials.” Bates also knows that the purposes of the actions against Ms. Plame were not to rebut criticism, but to punish her husband and to intimidate other potential whistle-blowers in the government.

Why did Bates lie?

The Post omitted essential facts which make the reasons painfully obvious. The facts are not difficult to find. Two are easily found in Bates' official bio, which I readily obtained running a single Google search.

Judge Bates was appointed United States District Judge in December 2001.

He was appointed by the same administration whose highest political operatives were defendants in the lawsuit.

Judge Bates was on detail as Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater investigation from 1995 to mid-1997.

Anyone involved with Ken Starr's partisan hackery is a GOP crony of the worst kind, putting partisan politics ahead of the rule of law.

Another damning fact can be found by doing just a bit more Googling.

Bates' illegally dimissed a lawsuit by the General Accounting Office to get access to records from Dick Cheney's illegal secret meetings with energy company donors on energy policy. Bates used false jurisdictional claims in that case which were somewhat similar to the false jurisdictional claims made in the Plame case.

The Post ignored this past breach of judicial trust by Bates' in pursuit of a partisan, GOP agenda, just as it ignored Bates' conflict of interest and his involvement with the highly disreputable Ken Starr. Readers of the article were led to believe that this was a perfectly normal ruling by a disinterested jurist.

Bates' actions have seriously undermined the credibility of the federal judiciary. The Post long ago sacrificed any sliver of credibility it had on the altar of partisan, Republican politics.

There has been a serious problem with the homophobia of Mayor Bloomberg's and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's NYPD for years. Unless the victims of queer bashings are famous or dead, the NYPD is notorious for its slow responses and lack of action on the cases.

On April 27, Bloomberg and Kelly have gotten the mayor's Community Assistance Unit to deny a permit to move the annual queer pride festival to a different day and location, even though the CAU originally said that they would approve the permit.

They are using an unconstitutional 2003 moritorium on new street festivals as the excuse, even though this was not a new street festival. They violated their own illegal policy in order to discriminate against queers.

The old location was difficult to access during the day of the parade, and that resulted in a disturbingly low turnout for the festival. In most cities, pride festivals play a critical role in community building, something that homophobic bigots like Bloomberg and Kelly would like to avoid.

Annual Pridefest Likely to Be Nixed (Gay City News)

Information from Heritage of Pride

Mitt Romney shows how truly nutty and anti-woman he can be in today's USA Today article:

"There's a lot more to being pro-life beyond appointing conservative justices."

"That, I will do," promised Romney. "I like Roberts and Alito, I like Thomas and Scalia. I like that kind of thinking on the bench, and that's the kind of justice I will appoint."

That makes if official. The Christian religious extremism we have seen under Bush would be replaced by Mormon religious extremism under Romney.

Don't assume Romney is a moderate because he was Massachusetts' Governor. The real Romney is far, far to the right.

Push polling is a common, though dirty political tactic. Generally, callers will pretend to be running an opinion poll, but the questions will be slanted as to try to shape the opinions and voting behavior of the people receiving the phone calls, not to gather data.

I just received something that is a new wrinkle (at least to me) on this tactic: a push poll via USPS mail. It had the amusing title of “Republican Party Census Document.”

The start of the accompanying letter was a hoot.

Dear Fellow Republican,

You are among a select group of Republicans who have been chosen to take part in the official 2007 CENSUS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Enclosed is your new 2007 GOP CENSUS DOCUMENT, which was assigned and prepared especially for you as a representative of all Republicans in your voting district.

Of course, I am not a Republican and have given them no reason to think I am or to have my address. Even more hilarious is that they are calling the mailing a “census document,” an apparent attempt to intimidate the gullible into filling out the survey.

The questions being used inspired some chuckles as well. Here are some examples of the loaded questions the Republican National Committee was using.

Should we do everything we can do stop Democrats from repealing critical border and port security legislation?

This is especially cute, given that Republicans have fought against port security legislation with absolute fanaticism. More examples follow:

Should President [sic] Bush's successful income and capital gains tax cuts be made permanent?

Should Republicans in Congress oppose the new wasteful government spending programs proposed by the Democrats and their leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid?

Should we continue working for serious tort reform to protect individuals and small businesses from predatory lawsuits?

Do you support President [sic] Bush's initiative to allow private religious and charitable groups to do more to help those in need?

These kind of questions just make the GOP look idiotic to well-informed people, but they could significantly influence people who do not follow the news or who get fake news from Faux News, Rush Limbaugh, the New York Post, etc.

However, there was one sincere part of the mailing, the part where they were begging for money.

It is amazing how little has changed with the GOP. 43 Republicans betrayed the working poor in order to pander to business interests. They actually fillibustered a pitifully small minimum wage increase on the grounds that they wanted more tax breaks for business attached to it. Every independent and Democratic Senator voted for the minimum wage increase or did not vote.

After years and years of Republicans showering our nation's treasury on big money donors, you would think that the GOP would be satisfied. Yet, they never stop trying to pander to the corrupt people who fund their campaigns. We desperately need public financing of elections.

Here is the latest GOP Hall of Shame.

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Moderate Republicans from blue states face serious difficulties. They are tethered to a party that is increasingly unpopular where they live. In the past, they could win general elections by taking occasional moderate stands on issues. However, the defeats of Lincoln Chafee and Jim Leach show that disgust with the GOP often can trump individual political positions when voters are sufficiently angry.

Of course, electorates increasingly hostile to Republicans are not the only problems facing moderate blue state Republicans. The “Club for Growth,” a group of extremely rich Republicans from the far right of that party, routinely runs primary challenges against GOP moderates.

Politicians like Susan Collins and Christopher Shays are ideologically incompatible with the GOP and have been ever since Ronald Reagan swept the Christian Right into party control in 1980. The same is true of Gordon Smith and Arlen Specter, who really do not fit that well with the Democrats either.

There is a simple solution for them. They can switch to being independents. Over 35% of voters are independents. James Jeffords showed that being an independent makes politicians more popular in blue states than being a Republican.

Jeffords ended up caucusing with Democrats in the Senate, but was able to vote pretty much how he pleased. Such an arrangement would be very convenient for many moderate Republicans.

(Note: Olympia Snowe has been excluded from this analysis because her personal popularity trumps her GOP affiliation. She can get away with staying in the GOP as long as she wants.)

How many Republicans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

The light bulb never actually gets screwed in, but hundreds of Republicans in right-wing think tanks work feverishly to find a way to blame Bill Clinton for it.

"Heckler Subdued at George Allen Event"

This headline, on a story with a byline for Bob Lewis of the Associated Press, was extremely misleading. In the article, you find out that George Allen staffers put someone in a chokehold. Putting someone in a chokehold is not “subduing” someone. It is assault and battery.

The San Francisco Chronicle at least included mention of the chokehold, though some news outlets that ran the AP story conveniently edited it out.

The assault and battery victim, Mike Stark, was asking perfectly reasonable questions about claims that George Allen spat on his first wife. Court records from Allen's first divorce have been sealed, an unusual circumstance which only adds to the suspicious nature of the situation.

Mike Stark was asking the kind of questions that any mainstream reporter would be asking if not for the rampant right-wing bias in the corporate media. Yet, the AP article dismissed him as a "heckler" and downplayed the crime of assault and battery that was committed against him. Just because Stark is a centrist blogger does nothing to alter or justify the crime commited against him or the lack of real reporting from the corporate media.

If newspapers want moderate and liberal readers to take them seriously, they need to make sure their articles are accurate and not pro-GOP propaganda. Wire services need to have higher standards of accuracy or they will continue to undermine the circulations of their customers, daily newspapers.

Another Republican has been fired in a corruption scandal.

Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston is out. The House Government Reform Committee has accused Rove aide Susan Ralston inside info from the Bush Regime to GOP activist and confessed criminal Jack Abramoff. She partied on Abramoff's generosity, receiving tickets to sports and entertainment events while being oh-so-helpful.

Karl Rove, who was involved in revealing the identity of an under cover CIA agent working on WMDs, still has a job. Bush said he would fire anyone involved with this. Bush lied, which hardly is surprising.

Remember how Hastert protected the reputation of an old Turkish regime that committed genocide against Armenians? There were bribery allegations involved. Yet, the pro-GOP corporate media leave out this important context for Hastert's latest cover-up scandal.

Of course, the corporate media are still ignoring the Downing Street Memo, which proves that the Bush regime faked intelligence on WMDs in Iraq. This may be an older scandal than the Page Turner, but it still is relevant. Our troops are dying, and so are the Iraqis. Yet, the corporate media are still helping to cover up how they got put there.

The Republican Party has tried to scapegoat queers for pedophilia for years. It turns out to be a classic case of projection.

Learn more about rampant GOP pedophilia.

Here are some other explanations for the acronym “GOP” floating around the Internet:

GANG OF PEDOPHILES
GOD'S OWN PEDOPHILES
GREEDY OPPRESSIVE PEDOPHILES
GROTESQUE OLD PERVERTS

Considerable protest has targetted New School President Bob Kerry and his decision to invite John "Keating Five" McCain to speak at the university's commencement address.

The criticism has been focused on issues such as McCain's support of the illegal and unAmerican war in Iraq. McCain also has been criticized for his misogyny, homophobia, and contempt towards the legitimacy of the political views of young adults.

However, there is another important aspect of the issue that has largely been overlooked. The decision by Kerry to invite McCain to speak at commencement shows a lack of concern about ethical education in the University.

McCain is a corrupt politician. His actions and those of the rest of the Keating Five cost people their retirement savings and who helped his corporate cronies carry forward schemes that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in the Savings and Loan Bailout. Universities should invite commencement speakers of the highest ethical standards, not sleaze like John "Keating Five" McCain.

A university is not just supposed to provide rote memorization and a degree that helps with future career and income. Part of a university's responsibility is to teach ethical behavior. One of the most influential ways of educating people is by example. What a terrible example Bob Kerry has provided in John “Keating Five” McCain.

You can join in MoveOn.org's efforts to stop the nomination of Samuel Alito, a militant, anti-American fundamentalist, to the US Supreme Court.

Send letters to your Senators!

Here are some quotes from MoveOn's email on the subject.

AFL-CIO

We are compelled to oppose [Alito's] nomination to be an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. ...Judge Alito's decisions and dissents show a disturbing tendency to take an extremely narrow and restrictive view of laws passed by Congress to protect workers' rights, resulting in workers being deprived of wage and hour, health and safety, anti-discrimination, pension and other important protections.

NAACP

"We have undertaken an extensive review of Judge Alito's civil rights record spanning his career as a lawyer and a judge...As a result we have concluded that Judge Alito's confirmation would cause a substantial shift in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on civil rights and that his confirmation would be to the detriment of the nation. Thus, we are compelled to oppose his nomination.

Sierra Club

In the first such move since the Bork nomination of 1987, on December 20 the Sierra Club joined with other national environmental groups to urge Senators to oppose the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. Americans deserve mainstream, independent Justices, with unassailable integrity, who will protect individual rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, Judge Alito's opinions and other statements, combined with a disturbing lack of candor since being nominated, show that Judge Alito cannot be trusted to protect those rights and freedoms.

NARAL Pro-Choice America

Samuel Alito, Jr. of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is an anti-choice jurist. As a member of the three-judge panel that heard Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey before the case went to the Supreme Court, Alito wrote a dissent in which he argued to uphold even more abortion restrictions than the Supreme Court eventually upheld in its now-famous decision. Alito, who has been called "a favorite son of the political right," would likely vote to eviscerate or eliminate the protections of Roe as a member of the Supreme Court.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

According to Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., the First Amendment puts
few limitations on politically powerful majorities' ability to use the
machinery of government to advance their religious views, even at
the expense of the religious freedom of minorities. Replacing Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor with Judge Alito would fundamentally alter
First Amendment law and immediately put at risk many of the crucial
protections for religious minorities that the Supreme Court has
recognized and consistently enforced over the past sixty years.

The Human Rights Campaign

As a Judge, Samuel Alito struck down a school policy that protected gay students from harassment. He is far to the right of Justice O'Connor on due process and reproductive rights. Judge Alito's narrow view of Congress would dangerously threaten Congress' power to enact non-discrimination legislation protecting citizens and has failed to distance himself from a group that advocated discrimination of which he was a member. In short, Judge Alito is the wrong choice for the Supreme Court.

People for the American Way

Samuel Alito has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since his appointment by the first President Bush in 1990. In that time, Alito has compiled an extensive, extreme right-wing judicial record on numerous matters of importance to the protection of the rights and interests of ordinary Americans—a record that has earned him the nickname "Scalito" for his ideological resemblance to Justice Antonin Scalia. Alito's judicial opinions demonstrate that he is an out of the mainstream opponent of fundamental legal rights and protections for all Americans and must not be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Very little that Republican politicians do could shock me, but the latest Bill Frist scandal is outrageous. It turns out a so-called AIDS charity, “World of Hope Inc.,” started by Frist has become a slush fund for Frist's cronies.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051217/ap_on_go_co/frist_charity

A particularly damaging passage from the article:

The rest of the money went to overhead. That included $456,125 in consulting fees to two firms run by Frist's longtime political fundraiser, Linus Catignani. One is jointly run by Linda Bond, the wife of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo.

Frist is already facing allegations of insider trading. One has to wonder how much else is going on the leader of Senate Republicans.

Will Log Cabin demand Frist's resignation from the Senate or are they happy that he is looting money for people with AIDS?