Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Republican

[AmazonGrace]

Which racists say they're racists? they don't think they're racist, they think they're right.

[hoipolloi]

I've lost count by now...

However, this is why Twitter can be great:

[GreyhoundFan]

"Party of values" HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

 

[fraurosena]

Words are empty, just so much breath on the wind. Still, it's a start.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Somebody please give this man a copy of the Constitution and underline The Title of Nobility Clause in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8. I believe the presidunce has a sharpie you could borrow for the purpose.

 

Edited September 10, 2019 by fraurosena

[47of74]

Another one

Quote

Pennsylvania state Sen. Michael Folmer (R) was arrested and charged Tuesday with possession of child pornography.

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) said the arrest was the result of an investigation that started with a CyberTip report that Tumblr had discovered a user had uploaded child pornography using its application.

The investigation led to Folmer’s home, where authorities with the Office of Attorney General’s Child Predator Section, Lebanon City Police Department and U.S. Department of Homeland Security found images of child pornography on his phone Tuesday. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another one:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Lawmaker who warned against drunk driving over the holidays arrested for DWI on New Year’s Eve"

Quote

It was the night before Christmas, and one of New York’s most powerful elected Republicans had an urgent message for his constituents: Don’t drive drunk.

Yes, the holiday season is a time of merriment, Brian Kolb, the New York Assembly’s minority leader, wrote in his hometown newspaper. But, he reminded readers, “tragedy can be only one bad decision away.”

“Please consider the ramifications of impaired driving,” Kolb wrote, “especially as we prepare to close out 2019 and welcome in a new decade.”

It was a plea, Kolb later admitted, that he did not himself follow.

On New Year’s Eve — just a week after his precautionary column was published in the upstate Daily Messenger — Kolb was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated.

“This was a terrible lapse in judgment, one I have urged others not to make, and I take full responsibility for it,” Kolb said in a statement Wednesday. “I fully recognize the severity of the situation and I am profoundly sorry. There is no excuse and no justification for what occurred Tuesday evening. I made the wrong decision, and it is one I deeply regret.”

At 10:30 that evening, Kolb was just down the road from his home in Victor, N.Y., south of Rochester, when he drove his state-owned 2018 GMC Acadia into a ditch, said Ontario County Sheriff Kevin Henderson. A driver on an adjacent road noticed the large SUV run aground and called 911.

According to Henderson, a deputy arrived on scene and conducted field sobriety tests. The lawmaker failed them and was taken to the county jail, where a breath test showed his blood alcohol content was above 0.08 percent, the legal limit. No one was injured in the crash, and Henderson said Kolb was alone in the car when police got there. The sheriff, a Democrat elected in 2018, said Kolb would be afforded no preferential treatment.

“This is a high-profile individual, and I just want people to understand he’s going to be held accountable,” Henderson told The Washington Post. “Mr. Kolb is not being shown any favoritism because of his political stature.”

Henderson and Kolb have worked together in the past, and the assemblyman has been “very supportive” of local law enforcement, Henderson said. But he pledged that power, proximity and partisanship would play no role in Kolb’s case, using as an example the department’s release of Kolb’s mug shot — a portrait of the lawmaker sporting a gray hoodie and a five o’clock shadow.

“That shows the community that he is being treated like anyone else would be treated if they had this offense,” Henderson said.

The maximum penalty for a first-time DWI offender in New York is a year in jail and $1,000 in fines, with a mandatory driver’s license revocation of at least six months.

First elected 20 years ago, Kolb became minority leader in 2009. He’s now the legislature’s longest-serving member in a leadership position, and in 2018 he flirted with statewide politics, briefly running against longtime Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D).

But in the days since the arrest, at least one of Kolb’s Republican colleagues has called for his resignation. On Twitter, Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor said Kolb “should step down as Assembly Minority Leader.”

“That he hasn’t done so already is a disgrace,” wrote Lalor, who represents a district near Poughkeepsie.

Another Republican, Assemblyman Will Barclay, urged caution.

“Obviously, everybody is very disappointed,” Barclay, who has served with Kolb since 2002, told the Syracuse Post-Standard. “But Brian has built up a lot of good will in the conference. I don’t think there’s a movement to push for his resignation. I think we want to give him a chance to present his story when we’re back in session next week.”

The Ontario County district attorney, Republican Jim Ritts, appointed the district attorney of neighboring Yates County as a special prosecutor in the case — an effort at avoiding claims of unfairness.

“We want to maintain the absolute integrity of the system and this prosecution by avoiding any possible appearance of impropriety,” Ritts told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in an email.

Kolb has a history of supporting stricter driving while intoxicated legislation. In 2009, his office boasted that he backed “legislation that would make New York State’s DWI laws the strongest in the country.”

Two days after his newspaper column published, the Democrat and Chronicle noted, Kolb sent a tweet reiterating his warning: “There is no excuse for driving impaired this holiday season,” he wrote.

That tweet has since been deleted.

 

[smittykins]

He’s one district over from mine.

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

This is next level rage-inducing disgusting.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[47of74]

Maricopa County Republican.  Why the fornicate am I not surprised?

Quote

Paul Petersen pleaded guilty in federal court in Arkansas to conspiracy to commit human smuggling, the third guilty plea he’s entered for the scheme. Petersen, a Republican who served as Maricopa County, Arizona’s assessor for six years until his resignation in January, pleaded guilty to human smuggling and fraud charges in Arizona and Utah last week.

"This plea agreement is one more step on a long road towards putting an end to the illegal adoption practices that have long plagued the Marshallese community in our district," David Clay Fowlkes, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, said in a statement.

Petersen is accused of illegally paying women from the Pacific island nation to come to the United States to give up their babies in at least 70 adoption cases in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas over three years. Citizens of the Marshall Islands have been prohibited from traveling to the U.S. for adoption purposes since 2003.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Kayleigh (R-Hypocrite) is able to keep a straight face.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'll be happy to see Pompeo out of power:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Defender of Christian values indeed: "After sending a junior staffer 588 texts, some with kissing emoji, Alaska’s attorney general resigns"

Quote

Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson (R) resigned Tuesday, following the leak of more than 500 texts he sent to a junior state employee’s personal cellphone in one month, frequently remarking on her beauty and sharing the kissing-face emoji.

“I regret that my actions and errors in judgment in interacting with a state employee have become a distraction to the good work and good people working in the state’s and your service,” Clarkson said in his resignation letter to the Alaska governor.

The texts were published Tuesday by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica. Clarkson was not the direct supervisor of the woman, who wasn’t identified by the Daily News and didn’t comment for their report. But Clarkson, who is married, held a much higher position in the state government and earned more than twice as much as the junior employee, the paper reported.

Shortly after stories published, Clarkson resigned, although he denied sending any intentionally inappropriate messages and characterized the texts as “innocent mutual endearments.” He said the conversations involved food, movies, books and their families. He invited the younger woman to come to his home to share dinner multiple times, and each time she politely declined.

“All of these texts were 'G' rated,” Clarkson said in his resignation letter. “There is nothing remotely salacious about the texts.”

Still, Clarkson acknowledged that he should have recognized the power disparity between himself and the junior state employee could have made her uncomfortable. He also acknowledged physical interactions with the woman, including hugs and a kiss. He apologized for making the woman feel uneasy through the texts and physical embraces.

“On several occasions, this person initiated a friendly hug when I came to her work place,” Clarkson wrote, “and I reflexively gave her a tiny peck of a kiss on top of her head.”

Before he resigned on Tuesday, Clarkson had been placed on unpaid administrative leave following a human resources investigation of his interactions with the much-younger employee. He had reportedly been unreachable for a month, leaving the decision-making in the Department of Law to other government employees.

The governor accepted the attorney general’s resignation Tuesday afternoon.

“Kevin Clarkson has admitted to conduct in the workplace that did not live up to our high expectations, and this is deeply disappointing,” Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) said in a statement. “This morning he took responsibility for the unintentional consequences of his actions and tendered his resignation to me. I have accepted it.”

The former attorney general was appointed by Dunleavy in December 2018. Clarkson had earned a reputation as a defender of conservative Christian values. He represented conservative activists pushing a ballot initiative that would require parents to be notified if their minor child sought an abortion. He also represented religious organizations in court battles over tax exemptions and public prayer, the Daily News reported. Last December, Dunleavy appealed to President Trump to help Clarkson’s stepson and wife secure visas to come to the United States from Colombia, describing the former attorney general as “a wise and trusted legal advisor, a man of exceptional character, and a devoted husband and father.”

The text messages began in March and continued for 27 days, the Daily News reported. In the texts, Clarkson invited the woman to his home 18 times. He sent her 56 kissing face emoji. He invited her to drink wine with him. He called her “beautiful” and “sweet lady.” And after they had not seen each other for a while told her, “you owe me a number of hugs.”

After the woman asked Clarkson to respect professional boundaries, he replied “OK I won’t bother you more,” the Daily News reported. He told her he had enjoyed talking to her and called the hugs that they had shared “pretty darn special.”

Then he sent her 200 more text messages, the newspaper reported.

In early April, the woman told Clarkson he should stop inviting her to his home. “Please remember this is my personal phone,” she texted him. In all, Clarkson had sent her 558 texts.

The Daily News reported that the state denied multiple records requests for the texts while Clarkson was on leave; the paper eventually got the texts from another, unnamed, source.

Until Dunleavy appoints a new attorney general, Clyde “Ed” Sniffen, Jr. will lead the Alaska Department of Law as acting attorney general.

 

[CTRLZero]

Re:  Alaska Attorney General - I don't know where they get these guys.  I read the Pro Publica article and his history was not unblemished.  It also looks like he didn't intend to resign, only take a leave of absence, but then was probably counseled to go away. 

When I was in my early 20s and very naive, I had a boss like this, so I can relate.  Aargh.  I ended up quitting.  When the board of directors learned why, they fired his ass and called me back into work.  I didn't last long, though, because the culture of that entire workplace was not healthy.  The only good part of the ordeal was I learned to stand up for myself and have passed that attitude onto our daughter. 

[Howl]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

He had reportedly been unreachable for a month, leaving the decision-making in the Department of Law to other government employees.

So, hiking the Klondike Trail solo?

[47of74]

Surprise, surprise 

Quote

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing conspiracy theorist and noted bigot who is all but assured to win her race for Congress in Georgia, has been described as a “Donald Trump in heels.” And according to a New Yorker profile of the future member of Congress and her race, that comparison between Greene and Trump is even more apt than we thought—Greene, who enjoys talking up her strong belief in traditional family values, allegedly has quite a history of extramarital affairs.

Greene often describes herself as a wife, a mother, and a Christian and as someone who will bring those values to D.C. But according to Jim Chambers, the former owner of the CrossFit gym that Greene later took over, it seems part of Greene’s family values is sleeping with men who are not her husband.

Who knows, maybe she and her husband are swingers with an open marriage, which is a choice that I certainly don’t judge and in fact support! But that doesn’t seem what’s happening here. When asked by the New Yorker to respond to these allegations, Greene issued a vaguely worded threat. “Let me be clear with you,” Greene wrote in a text. “Writing defamatory articles about me is a very bad choice. Be very wise in who your ‘sources’ are.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't stand Hawley. He is such an entitled snot.

 

[47of74]

The National Catholic Reporter called out all the Catholics wanting to execute people

Quote

Yet in a three-month killing spree that conspicuously began during the heated final months of the 2020 presidential campaign, Attorney General William Barr oversaw the executions of seven people: Daniel Lewis Lee on July 14; two days later, Wesley Ira Purkey; the next day Dustin Lee Honken.

In between their deaths, the attorney general, a Catholic, received the Christifideles Laici Award, to "help highlight these good works and those who serve the Church so well" at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

Of course, not all lower courts learn their lessons with equal alacrity. Hall was executed on Nov. 19. Before his scheduled execution, the federal district court entered a stay. Ginsburg was no longer on the court; her replacement, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, had just been sworn in. Now the Supreme Court did not even wait for the United States Court of Appeals to weigh in — it reached down and vacated the stay. Barrett joined her fellow Catholic justices and Gorsuch. Hall was killed one hour later.

And that Catholics in high offices have shown by their own extraordinary actions that they are among the most active participants in executing tragically vulnerable people.

These are the kind of people if Jesus Christ walked into the Vatican tomorrow they'd be calling for him to be excommunicated along with the Pope if Francis so much as smiled at him.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Seen him on Twitter a lot.