In an effort to tweak its ethics rules following a spate of corruption, the Massachusetts House is considering among other things a requirement that lobbyists wear ID badges in the statehouse if they're "seeking access to House members or staff." This doesn't seem controversial. Then again, maybe it's the Holocaust?
What this 2012 presidential race needs — what America needs, really — is another wiseass Tea Party conservative mid-level congressman with niche appeal to further dilute the far right primary vote and effectively hand the nomination over to Mitt Romney. Fortunately it looks like five-time Michigan Rep. Thad McCotter will be that much needed extra spoiler. He's in it, and he's in it to win it!
Despite the fact that our entire global ecosystem is set to collapse into one big festering pool of chlorine at 6 p.m. on August 12, 2018, American are not in any "rush" to let it affect our spending habits. The latest "earth-friendly" product we're telling to fuck off and die: anything refillable. That's not American.
Who's the last remaining initial member of President Obama's core economic team? The one people really don't like, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. But this job and his term as president of the New York Fed immediately proceeding it are exhausting him. It's backbreaking work, hoisting that money-launching cannon aimed at bankers all day. He's ready to quit.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo became the nation's progressive superhero and pre-determined 2016 Democratic nominee for president just last week, with the legalization of same-sex marriage. So what's next for this once-in-a-generation liberal lion? How about ditching the state's moratorium on dangerous hydraulic fracturing for natural gas? Hmm.
In your pleasant Thursday media column: Mark Halperin's Obama's-a-pussy flashback, Ashton Kutcher vs. the Village Voice, Greta Van Susteren calls for more outrage, an angry subject sues David Grann, and Brits are coming for you news.
The Republican party's ability to spontaneously organize around anything, just to show that they can, is a thing of beauty. President Obama wants a few hundred billion dollars in revenue increases to go along the $2 trillion in cuts that you want? Don't give in a cent, walk out, let the president excoriate you, and then get your entire 47-member Senate caucus to demand a comical balanced budget constitutional amendment as part of a debt-ceiling agreement, too.
Republican media strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News Channel in 1996, ostensibly as a "fair and balanced" counterpoint to what he regarded as the liberal establishment media. But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the "prejudices of network news" and deliver "pro-administration" stories to heartland television viewers.
The Federal Election Commission gets it — Stephen Colbert is punking them. But they treated his request for an advisory opinion like anyone else, and on Thursday granted him the ability to form a "super PAC" and have his parent company Viacom pay for most of the costs of the PAC's activities without having to disclose most expenditures as in-kind donations.
It's early, but this should be a lock for Most Awful Story of the Day: Isayah Muller (pictured) graduated from high school in the Bronx on Tuesday. Afterwards, he went out to a celebration dinner with his family. When his father, Andre, got back in the car after the dinner, he found that a $200 bottle of cologne was missing. Andre, with his family in the car, drove back to the parking garage where he'd been parked and confronted the attendants there, accusing them of stealing the cologne. They let him search the office. He couldn't find it. So, police say, he attacked one of the parking attendants, punching him. The other attendant grabbed a knife to defend his colleague.
John Lennon was shot and killed in 1980 just after the election of Ronald Reagan, and it's this pairing of events that symbolized the end of the political Left. Maybe? I just made that up, but it seems like one of those things people would say. But what if John Lennon was a secret Ronald Reagan lover in the end? That's what Lennon's last personal assistant is claiming.
President Obama held a press conference at the White House today! The questions came fast and furious — actually rather slowly, since he talks for 10 minutes at a time — and now all Americans are 100% informed about every issue. Here's an executive summary.
"Everyone into the survival pods, quickly! We may be smashed and the pressure could blow! Space death and boiling blood is what we face!" These words or some version of them were likely spoken aboard the International Space Station yesterday around 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, when the astronauts there were *nearly* obliterated by speeding space debris.
Be warned: You are going to be enraged when you hear this news, imbued with all the populist animalism you can muster and smashing crap all afternoon: Goldman Sachs is cutting some jobs in America and adding 1,000 people in Singapore. Are there even words to describe how much the average American will miss its favorite company?
Are the sharks out for Michele Bachmann, or what? Little miscues that offer a quick, innocent laugh at first become over-reported multiday scandals about how she's the stupidest person alive. She loves serial killers, what an idiot! And now one of Hollywood's prominent songwriters won't even let her use a song she likes, at events. The self-victimizing fundraising letters write themselves.
