Representative C. W. Bill Young, Florida’s longest-serving member of Congress and a Republican hawk on military spending during his 43 years in Washington, died Friday in Bethesda, Md. He was 82.
His chief of staff, Harry Glenn, said Mr. Young died at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized with back problems stemming from a 1970 small plane crash.
On Oct. 9, Mr. Young, who represented a district in the Tampa Bay area, announced from his hospital bed that he would not seek another term in 2014.
As one of the strongest military supporters in Congress, Mr. Young made headlines in 2012 when he said that the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, reflecting a growing weariness with the war.
Mr. Young was considered the elder statesman of Florida’s Republican Party and in the House, where he served 22 terms, beginning in 1970.
A family of a Dallas-area man wants to know why cops showed up and shot 52-year-old Bobby Gerald Bennett, especially after their official description of the incident is proven wrong on a surveillance video.
The police report read that officer Cardan Spencer shot Bennett as he walked towards him with a “knife raised in an aggressive manner.”
But the video shows that Bennett was standing still with both arms at his sides when he was struck in the abdomen by a single bullet. Bennett is currently in intensive care due to the gunshot wound.
The original story, based on the police report, can be read here. The Dallas News articles says that the officers asked Bennett to show his hands, but he allegedly told them “you all are going to need more officers out here.”
Bennett began walking toward officers with the knife raised, police said. One of the officers on the scene fired four times, striking Bennett once.
Police said Bennett’s mother told them he had been off his antipsychotic medications for several months.
Bennett was arrested and faces an aggravated assault to a public servant charge. His bond hasn’t been set.
The surveillance video shows that Bennett clearly did nothing that would merit an aggravated assault charge.
New York Knicks fans, brace yourself. Take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Then make sure you’re sitting down before reading any further.
In a long-form piece for The New York Observer, Rafi Kohan relayed the following quote, spoken by none other than Carmelo Anthony:
I want to be a free agent. I think everybody in the NBA dreams to be a free agent at least one time in their career. It’s like you have an evaluation period, you know. It’s like if I’m in the gym and I have all the coaches, all the owners, all the GMs come into the gym and just evaluate everything I do. So yes, I want that experience.
‘Melo’s impending foray into free agency has been the subject of much discussion throughout the offseason.
Will he decide to stay in New York for the foreseeable future? Will he opt out and hit the open market? Could he—gasp—join the Los Angeles Lakers, putting on a purple-and-gold jersey that would incite plenty of boos?
It’s sure to be a hot-button issue throughout the 2013-14 campaign, even as the Knicks keep pace in the Eastern Conference and remain a legitimate part of the title chase. Especially now that the world knows where Anthony stands on the issue.
But what does this actually mean? Should we start spewing out doom and gloom for the Knicks?
Sen John McCain of Arizona has been adamant, strongly voicing his disagreement on his fellow Republicans and the way they shut down the government. I cannot remember him ever calling Louie Gohmert by name, but for some strange reason, Gohmert went to the Values Voters Summit and attacked McCain.
Said Gohmert;
“Some senator from Arizona, a guy that liked Qaddafi before he wanted to bomb him, a guy that liked Mubarak before he wanted him out, a guy that’s been to Syria and supported al-Qaeda and rebels, but he was saying today the shutdown is a fool’s errand.”
You know McCain was not going to just sit back and let that one fly. In an interview with Brian Williams of NBC News, McCain swung back when he was asked about Gohmert’s statement.
“Sometimes those–comments like that are made out of malice, but if someone has no intelligence I don’t view it as being a malicious statement.”
When McCain was through calling Gohmert a dumb doorknob, he then said, “I intend to maintain civility!” LOL!
Consider yourself fortunate folks. You have a front row seat to witness the dismantling of today’s Republican party
You have to be a Republican to buy what these people are selling. Or you have to hate the President so much that you’re willing to dismiss the facts to believe the lies. And yes, there many Republicans willing to believe the lies. Although the facts have been smacking them in the face for the last 16 days.
Various right-wing media outlets are picking up the claim that President Barack Obama deliberately lured Republicans into a trap planned by his senior advisor Valerie Jarrett.
The claim originates with author Ed Klein, who wrote a provocative and widely criticized biography of Obama called The Amateur, in addition to The Truth About Hillary, a similarly received book on the Clintons.
“(Jarrett) convinced the president that a government shutdown and default offered a great opportunity to demonize the Republicans and help the Democrats win back a majority in the House of Representatives in 2014,” Klein told The New York Post.
Klein said Jarrett told the president that voters would blame Republicans for the shutdown and “devised the no-negotiating strategy” that ultimately forced the GOP to end the 16-day shutdown with Obamacare still intact and to extend the federal government’s borrowing power to avert debt default.
“Valerie also came with the idea of using the words ‘hostage’, and ‘ransom’ and ‘terrorists’ against the Republicans,” Klein said.
Those tactics, along with Republican antics before and after the shutdown began Oct. 1, drove the GOP’s favorability ratings to record lows for any political party.
A former middle school principal in North Carolina is accused of sexually assaulting a student while the boy’s unsuspecting parent was outside the room.
David Ellis Edwards, 49, was arrested Friday and charged with second-degree forcible sex offense, sexual acts with a student, taking indecent liberties with a minor and crimes against nature, WTVD reported.
Deputies say that between 2009 and 2011, Edwards molested at least three boys between the ages of 11 and 14. At least one of the incidents allegedly occurred in Edward’s office while the victim’s parent sat in a nearby waiting area.
Edwards resigned from his position at Douglas Byrd Middle School, where he had been principal since 2010, in August, WNCN reported. Before that, he was principal of Ramsey Street Alternative School. Officials believe that all of the sexual assaults took place on the campuses of these two schools.
Anthony Weiner says if he ran for mayor before there was a Worldwide Web, he ‘d now be calling the shots at City Hall.
“Maybe if the Internet didn’t exist? Like, if I was running in 1955? I’d probably get elected mayor,” Weiner told GQ magazine in a profile titled, ‘The year of Living Carlos Dangerously.”
Weiner with wife Huma Abedin and son Jordan.Photo: R. Umar Abbasi
The serial sexter also said he felt bad that his wife, Huma Abedin, absorbed so much negative press because of him.
“I duck it as best I can, but her reputation has become the ‘Woman Who Married an Idiot and Stuck with Him,’ ” Weiner said.
“I’m just an empty, soulless vessel, so it doesn’t hurt me as much.”
He conceded that his relationship with Huma turned rocky following revelations that he continued online relationships with women after he left Congress in disgrace for sending racy tweets.
“One thing I’m grateful for is that now I’m under no obligation to answer anything like this,” he said, speaking of his personal life. “But we’ve had a very rough time.”
The Tea Party is less popular than ever, with even many Republicans now viewing the movement negatively. Overall, nearly half of the public (49%) has an unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party, while 30% have a favorable opinion.
The balance of opinion toward the Tea Party has turned more negative since June, when 37% viewed it favorably and 45% had an unfavorable opinion. And the Tea Party’s image is much more negative today than it was three years ago, shortly after it emerged as a conservative protest movement against Barack Obama’s policies on health care and the economy.
In February 2010, when the Tea Party was less well known, the balance of opinion toward the movement was positive (33% favorable vs. 25% unfavorable). Unfavorable opinion spiked to 43% in 2011 after Republicans won a House majority and Tea Party members played a leading role in that summer’s debt ceiling debate.
The Tea Party’s favorability rating has fallen across most groups since June, but the decline has been particularly dramatic among moderate and liberal Republicans. In the current survey, just 27% of moderate and liberal Republicans have a favorable impression of the Tea Party, down from 46% in June.
The new national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Oct. 9-13 among 1,504 adults finds wide divisions between Tea Party Republicans and non-Tea Party Republicans in how they view major issues, some leading GOP figures and even the relationship between the Republican Party and the Tea Party itself. Tea Party Republicans are more likely than non-Tea Party Republicans to say that the Tea Party is part of the GOP, rather than a separate movement (41% vs. 27%).
Just as House Speaker John Boehner was concluding a brief press conference on Monday afternoon—declaring that House GOPers would once again send to the Senate a bill funding the government that would block Obamacare, practically ensuring a government shutdown—I bumped into former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who now works at Patton Boggs, a powerhouse law and lobbying firm in Washington. Glad not to be part of the mess? I asked.
“I’m of two minds,” Lott said. “I’d like to be in the arena and help work something out. But it’s gotten too nasty and too mean these days. I couldn’t work with these guys.”
What do you think of how Boehner and the House Republicans are handling this?
“They’ve made their point,” Lott huffed. “It’s time to say enough and move on.” Referring to the die-hard tea partiers in the House Republican caucus, he added, “These new guys don’t care about making things work.” Lott noted that in the mid-1990s, he warned then-Speaker Newt Gingrich not to force a government shutdown. “I knew it wouldn’t be good for us,” he said.
So how does this end? Lott said he still was optimistic that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could step in and negotiate a deal—maybe a short-term continuation of spending. (Not too long ago, I noted that the odds of a successful McConnell intervention were low.)
I asked Lott if his old GOP pals still serving in the Senate have lost control of their party. How do they feel about that? I inquired. Lott shook his head: “That Ted Cruz. They have to teach him something or cut his legs out from under him.”
Cut his legs out? Yeah, Lott replied with a chuckle.
CLEVELAND, Tenn. — “The premise was good,” said Bob McIntire, 53, an insurance executive here in deep red Bradley County, where the local Democrats would have trouble filling up a phone booth.
The payoff, well, that was the problem.
On talk radio and in the conservative blogosphere, the bipartisan vote on Wednesday to reopen the government without defunding President Obama’s health care law was being excoriated as an abject surrender and betrayal by spineless establishment Republicans. But for glum and frustrated conservative voters on Thursday around breakfast tables in eastern Tennessee, in the shadow of a military base in Colorado Springs and on the streets of suburban Philadelphia, it was as much a surrender to reality as to Democratic demands.
To Mr. McIntire, that reality was a media environment in which conservatives don’t get a fair hearing, a unified and shrewd Democratic opposition, and a Congress hopelessly compromised by Washington deal making. For Matias Elliott, a cabdriver in Colorado Springs, the reality was the harm being done to the nation’s military and to the local economy. For Jean Naples, a homemaker in Doylestown, Pa., it was the “despicable” way the shutdown disrupted funerals for military personnel killed overseas and the way her husband’s medical supply business had suffered a severe cash-flow problem during the shutdown.
Many conservatives described a dispiriting gap between conservative ideals, which they believe inspire widespread agreement, and conservative tactics, which do not. The failure to stop the health care plan left Republicans like Ms. Naples pessimistic and disillusioned. “I’m just totally blown away by everything,” she said. “I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore.”
Still, for many Wednesday night’s vote had to play out as it did, because there was no other alternative.
“The shutdown had to end,” said Andre Zarb-Cousin of Colorado Springs, who said that he believes the Affordable Care Act could destroy the country. “Who’s suffering? Veterans’ families. People being on welfare.”
Among commentators on the right, the reaction has been less driven by despair than by anger. In heated language on talk radio and on conservative blogs, many spoke of a winning if difficult strategy sabotaged in the end by weak-willed leadership.
“I was thinking about this last night, too, while I was pondering if I can ever remember a greater political disaster in my lifetime,” Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday on his radio show, “if I could ever remember a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist for all intents and purposes.”
This view of the shutdown, while infuriating to many on the right, has the virtue of being something fixable. On the conservative blog RedState, Erick Erickson said the capitulation was an urgent lesson in the need to replace establishment Republicans with true conservatives. Tea Party members here in Tennessee agreed, saying that despite the lack of policy victories by the Republicans in Congress, the shutdown had energized the base and shown them that some conservatives, like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, were willing to stand up.
“We’re just trying to make Washington, D.C., listen, and I think we did a really good job of that,” said Donny Harwood, 49, a nurse and the director of the Bradley County Tea Party.
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