TN-09: Racist and anti-Semitic ads from... a Democrat??

Ugh, this is disgusting. Tomorrow, on August 7, Tennessee will hold its primaries, and in Tennessee's 9th Congressional district, where Memphis is located, it's gotten ugly. This is the seat that used to belong to Harold Ford, Jr. (D), until he gave it up for a Senate run where the GOP ran that ad with the white woman going, "Harold, call me!" (Harold is black.) Well, when he gave up that seat, it went to fellow Democrat Steve Cohen, who is a white Jew.

And it seems that's become an issue.

In Congress, he's been pretty awesome. He's MUCH more progressive than Ford ever was, scoring a 96.28% progressive rating on Progressive Punch. But it seems certain folks in Memphis do not want them to be represented by anyone other than an African-American. So enter Nikki Tinker ("D"), who's challenging him in the primary. Cohen had already beaten her in a 15-candidate field in the 2006 primary.

Well, Tinker's people (so she can claim deniability) started in fine force back in February, unleashing this beyond disgusting flyer onto Memphis.



And then you get stupid racists spewing shit like this.

"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line," said Rev. Robert Poindexter of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church.

But now it's gotten even worse. This week began with Tinker herself releasing this ad associating Cohen with the KKK.



The local Memphis Commercial-Appeal denounced the ad. (In case you're wondering why he voted that way, RealClearPolitics provides the backstory. It's basically a jurisdiction issue.)

But that wasn't bad enough. Tinker then released this ad just today, and it has drawn so much negative reaction from all over the country, that her campaign has already removed it from YouTube. But we still have the transcript.

CHILD'S VOICE: "Now I lay me down to sleep..."
ANNCR: "Who is the real Steve Cohen anyway?"
CHILD'S VOICE: "I pray the Lord my soul to keep..."
ANNCR: "While he's in our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet..."
CHILD'S VOICE: "If I should die before I wake..."
ANNCR: "He is the only senator who thought our kids shouldn't be allowed to pray in school."
CHILD'S VOICE: I pray the Lord my soul to take.
ANNCR: "Congressman, sometimes apologies just aren't enough."
TINKER: "I'm Nikki Tinker, and I approve this message."

The announcer's voice specifically stressed "our" in that ad. That's about as blatant as an anti-Semitic dog whistle you're ever going to hear on TV. For this disgusting ad, Keith Olbermann tonight named Tinker today's Worst Person in the World.



EMILY's List, which had actually endorsed Tinker over Cohen, despite his perfect pro-choice record, back in May, condemned the ad too, as if that's really going to matter less than 24 hours before voting ends. Of course, they could have done what NOW and NARAL did, which was endorse Cohen over a truly despicable person in the first place.

Oh, but that's only half the story. It gets worse. Much worse.

Steve Cohen forcibly removed a cameraman from his house who had barged in uninvited to Cohen's hastily-called news conference at Cohen's house to address the religion-baiting ad... and the cameraman is allegedly pressing 'assault' charges. (Video from the local Memphis Fox affiliate is available here.) The cameraman is an Armenian-American activist and documentary filmmaker who has been stalking Cohen all week; he's not officially affiliated with the Tinker camp, but Armenian groups have given more than $30K to the Tinker campaign because of Cohen's opposition to the bill to call the World War I-era slaughter of Armenians genocide (and thus infuriate Turkey).

Small legalistic note: there's a big difference between some sorehead pressing charges, and the county DA actually following through on them (which I guess we'll find out about that tomorrow). The video shows Cohen escorting the guy out the door with hand firmly on his arm and giving him a shove out the door for good measure; since the cameraman was essentially trespassing, this isn't likely to amount to anything.

Now, it turns out that filmmaker Peter Mursurlian is actually a Republican operative who used to work for former California Congressman Carlos Moorhead (R) of Pasadena. Also, none of the other Tennessee Democrats are co-sponsoring the resolution either, but none of them have been targeted the way Cohen has been.

I wonder why.

Update: Steve Cohen ended up CRUSHING Tinker 79%-19%. Hopefully this is an end to her political career.

Also, it turns out that Tinker supports abstinence-only education, which is hardly a platform of someone who's supposedly "pro-choice". Way to go, EMILY's List.

The Case of Don Siegelman

For those in Bruin Democrats who went to Friday's Bill Maher taping, we were treated to a special Overtime session where a viewer e-mail asked about Don Siegelman. Most of you probably hadn't heard about this, but this may be one of the biggest scandals yet, and may be the real reason Karl Rove resigned when he did. Here's the clip for those that weren't there.



Siegelman, the Democratic Governor of Alabama, lost his re-election race to Bob Riley (R) in 2002 by a mere 3,000 votes. There were accusations of electronic vote tampering that gave Riley his victory. Because Siegelman wouldn't go away quietly, Karl Rove himself got involved, according to an affidavit filed by a Republican lawyer who was in on the conversation, in trying to railroad Siegelman. Bring him up on trumped up charges and send him to jail. Which is what they basically did, with the help of the U.S. attorney's office. In other words, the Justice Department became little more than what banana republics have, silencing opponents by throwing whatever they could at them and seeing what stuck.

According to Simpson's statement, William Canary, a senior G.O.P. political operative and Riley adviser who was on the conference call, said "not to worry about Don Siegelman" because "'his girls' would take care of" the governor. Canary then made clear that "his girls" was a reference to his wife, Leura Canary, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and Alice Martin, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama.

Canary reassured others on the conference call — who also included Riley's son, Rob, and Terry Butts, another Riley lawyer and former justice of the Alabama supreme court — that he had the help of a powerful pal in Washington. Canary said "not to worry — that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman," the Simpson affidavit says. Both U.S. attorney offices subsequently indicted Siegelman on a variety of charges, although Leura Canary recused herself from dealing with the case in May 2002. A federal judge dismissed the Northern District case before it could be tried, but Siegelman was convicted in the Middle District on bribery and conspiracy charges last June.

....

Siegelman, together with former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy, was convicted on bribery and conspiracy charges and faces sentencing June 26. Lawyers for Siegelman and Scrushy told TIME they were considering whether to use Simpson's affadavit in expected motions to dismiss charges against their clients, or in some other phase of what is likely to be a protracted appeals process.

Siegelman was convicted of appointing Scrushy to a hospital regulatory board in exchange for a $500,000 contribution to a campaign for a state lottery to fund education. Defense lawyers have argued that Siegelman drew no personal financial benefit from Scrushy's donation to the lottery campaign, and they note that Scrushy had served on the hospital regulatory board under three previous governors, before Siegelman reappointed him. The reappointment, they have argued, offered little of value to Scrushy except more work.

That's the most bizarre thing. Siegelman merely re-appointed Scrushy to the SAME POST he held under THREE previous governors, including Republican ones. And he received no personal benefit from it. How exactly is that a crime?

For more information on this, please read Harper's Scott Horton, one of the few reporters actually investigating all the sordid connections. In the end, Siegelman was probably guilty of nothing but being a Democrat in Alabama with Karl Rove working out of the White House.

Also, TIME magazine had another must-read follow-up last week which opened up a new avenue, the one that was discussed on Bill Maher's show.

On may 8, 2002, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbyist and landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking "good ole boy," was in an expansive mood. In the downtown offices of the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, Ala., Young settled into his chair, personal lawyer at his side, and proceeded to tell a group of seasoned prosecutors and investigators that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to some of the biggest names in Alabama Republican politics. According to Young, among the recipients of his largesse were the state's former attorney general Jeff Sessions, now a U.S. Senator, and William Pryor Jr., Sessions' successor as attorney general and now a federal judge. Young, whose detailed statements are described in documents obtained by TIME, became a key witness in a major case in Alabama that brought down a high-profile politician and landed him in federal prison with an 88-month sentence. As it happened, however, that official was the top Democrat named by Young in a series of interviews, and none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted.

So not only does the Justice Dept. prosecute Democrats on trumped up charges, when presented with evidence showing Republicans got ILLEGAL campaign contributions, they decided NOT to file any charges. And so Sessions is still a Senator (up for re-election in 2008), and Pryor is still a federal judge, instilling conservative decisions in all his rulings. We discuss this more on DailyKos, if anyone's interested in reading more commentary about this.

And just on Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) released an interview with Simpson that implicated Karl Rove in all this mess. This scandal is not over, not by a long shot. This may be the real scandal behind the U.S. attorney firings that eventually cost Attorney General Alberto Gonzales his job. It's already led to the retirement of New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici (R). It led to an innocent woman being thrown in jail on trumped up charges in Wisconsin just to tarnish Democratic Governor Jim Doyle's administration right before the election.

We've only hit the tip of the iceberg in the deep-seated corruption that is now, sadly, our Justice Department.

Dirty tricks ballot initiative DOA?

Could it be? Is this just a ruse, or is it for real? The L.A. Times blog is reporting the dirty tricks ballot initiative designed to give the GOP 20 of our electoral votes has been pulled!!

Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California's 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.

In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday's print editions, The Times' Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.

The reality is hundreds of thousands of signatures must be gathered by the end of November to get the measure on the June 2008 ballot.

If this is true, woo-hoo!!! But beware... they still could try to revive this later. They didn't seem to be able to get enough signatures for it to qualify for the June ballot, but for the November ballot........?

More commentary on DailyKos, Calitics, and an earlier piece from the New Yorker on just how dirty this trick was going to be. Looks like the revelations the other day that mysterious non-California donors connected to Rudy Giuliani were involved in this shenanigan was the final straw.

John Lyman Talking Dirty (Tricks)

(h/t to Julia Rosen)

Bradley Whitford, aka Josh Lyman, is speaking out against the dirty GOP ballot initiative designed to steal California's electoral votes too.

Stephen Colbert covers the dirty ballot initiative

We're hitting the big time! When Stephen Colbert mentions that dirty GOP trick here in California, the whole nation hears about it.



Crooks and Liars has a version you can download. The Comedy Central clip embedded here will expire in one month.

Oh, and Howard Dean was in San Francisco speaking out against it too, as even our presidential candidates are now condemning it as yet another dirty GOP trick.