Brayton’s Bag o’ Links gets uppity

Defender of marriage Newt Gingrich (photo: Matthew Bradley via Flickr.com)

Newt Gingrich defends marriage. No, seriously.

Newt Gingrich has recorded a commercial speaking out in favor of the California referendum to ban gay marriage. He tells people they must support the amendment in order to “defend and protect marriage.” Newt Gingrich. The man who has been married three times and cheated, at the very least, on both of his first two wives. The man who invented the “oral sex is not sex” argument (no, it wasn’t Clinton, it was Gingrich several years earlier after reports of infidelity first surfaced).

Newt Gingrich. The man who cheated on his first wife, then divorced her while she was in the hospital recovering from uterine cancer surgery — then refused to pay child support and alimony. A local church actually had to take up a collection to support his wife and children. The man who six months later married his second wife, then cheated on her with a congressional aide — whom he subsequently made his third wife. Newt Gingrich, for crying out loud, is talking about the need to “defend and protect marriage.” Newt, if you want to protect marriage, stop getting married. At the very least, stop cheating on every wife you have.

By the way, according to Newt’s official website, he and his wife recently narrated a documentary called Rediscovering God in America. Perhaps next year they’ll narrate Rediscovering Places to Have a Quickie on Capitol Hill and Not Get Caught So Your Wife Never Finds Out.

Sen. Stevens discovers the 4th Amendment

Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska is trying to get perfectly legal wiretaps thrown out as evidence in his corruption trial.

Lawyers for Sen. Ted Stevens signaled Tuesday they’ll try to keep jurors from hearing as many as 105 phone calls the FBI recorded as part of the investigation that led to the 84-year-old Alaska Republican’s indictment on corruption charges.

The phone calls appear to be among thousands of hours of secretly recorded phone conversations and video surveillance that have helped prosecutors land seven convictions and guilty pleas in a sweeping multiyear probe of corruption in Alaska politics.

Some background on this may be necessary. The DOJ has successfully prosecuted seven elected officials in Alaska on corruption charges, all of them based on taking bribes and kickbacks and illegal favors from Veco Inc., an oil services company (who also donated to Sarah Palin’s campaign for governor, by the way). As part of the investigation, the FBI got perfectly legal warrants for wiretaps on some of the executives from Veco — they went before a judge, showed probable cause and got a warrant, just as the 4th Amendment requires.

It turns out that out of the 2,800 phone calls that were intercepted with these wiretaps, 105 were with Stevens. But now Stevens wants that wiretap evidence thrown out because he wasn’t listed as a party whose calls would be intercepted. Funny, we didn’t hear a peep out of Stevens over the warrantless wiretaps that President Bush has been using to record the phone calls of American citizens. In fact, he voted with the president across the board on such matters. Now suddenly he discovers the 4th Amendment to make a far weaker argument against perfectly legal wiretaps that caught him breaking the law. Isn’t it ironic … don’t you think?

McCain’s musical copyright problems

Last week at the Republican National Convention the McCain campaign played Heart’s “Barracuda” as Sarah Palin’s theme music. Heart leaders Ann and Nancy Wilson immediately issued a cease and desist letter, saying they did not give permission to use their music. Van Halen did the same thing. So did Jackson Browne. I think they should just stick to Ted Nugent songs; he’ll give them permission. “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang,” anyone?

Conservative flip flops on Palin

This may be the single best bit “The Daily Show” has ever done, a montage of clips of various conservatives contradicting themselves in spectacular ways when it comes to Sarah Palin. First there’s Karl Rove, who praised the Palin choice because she was mayor of “the second largest city in Alaska (wrong; it’s the ninth largest) but last month blasted Obama for even considering Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine because prior to being governor he was only the mayor of Richmond, Va., the 105th largest city in the country. If he picked Kaine, Rove said, it would be “an intensely political choice where he said you know what, I’m really not first and foremost concerned with is this person capable of being president of the United States.”

Then it goes to Bill O’Reilly shaming those who would blame Palin for her daughter’s pregnancy, saying it’s a private matter and no one should judge them. And then video of O’Reilly putting the blame on Jamie Lynn Spears’ parents for her getting pregnant, calling them “incredible pinheads” for not “controlling” their daughter. And it ends with Palin saying she has no sympathy for women in politics who whine about being treated unfairly. Brilliant.

The “I’m a totally clueless dolt” defense

This seems to be the favorite defense used by Republicans saying racially insulting things lately. When Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia called Obama “uppity” last week, his excuse was that he had no idea that the term had any racial connotations at all. By golly, he was shocked — shocked! — to find out that it did. And now we get:

Adam LaDuca, 21, the former executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans, who wrote on his Facebook page in late July that Obama has “a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would.)”

And when called on it and forced to resign, not only did he say he had no idea that this played into racial stereotypes, he can’t believe anyone would make a big deal out of it. “And man, if sayin’ someone has large lips is a racial slur,” he said, “then we’re ALL in trouble.” Well no, Adam, we’re not; only you are.

By the way, LaDuca had previously called Martin Luther King Jr. a “pariah” and a “fraud.” Nope, no racism here, nothing to look at, move along.