In order to pursue an exciting new job opportunity in Columbia, South Carolina, JonesOnPolitics.com will shut down effective Tuesday, February 10, 2009. Thank you to everyone who has been supportive and helpful over the last few months. You all will be seeing a lot more of me and my efforts to help Democrats in South Carolina in the immediate future.
From USA Today:
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich told ABC’s Good Morning Americathat he considered appointing Oprah Winfrey to the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President Obama.
“She was obviously someone with a much broader bully pulpit than other senators,” Blagojevich said. But the Democrat said appointing Winfrey might have been perceived as a gimmick — and that Winfrey probably would not have accepted the appointment anyway.
Blagojevich faces federal conspiracy and bribery charges and an impeachment trial before the state Senate that begins today. He’s accused of, among other things, attempting to “sell” the Senate seat to the highest bidder. Blagojevich ultimately appointed Roland Burris, a former state attorney general. The U.S. Senate balked but finally seated Burris.
Had to cover this story as ECU is only a hop, skip, and a jump from my hometown of New Bern, North Carolina. Not surprised whatsoever, by the way.
From WRAL:
Campus police arrested an East Carolina University student following a snowball fight involving more than 200 students, officials said.
Freshman Steven Rashad Bass hit a campus police officer with a chunk of ice, ECU spokesman John Durham said. He was charged with assault on a public official and resisting arrest.
A video posted on YouTube.com shows an officer chasing a student across campus, tackling him and restraining him on the snowy ground.
“They, like, threw him on the ground, and I couldn’t believe it,” sophomore Adrianne Charleston said.
It was unclear whether Bass faces any school disciplinary action.
Pepper spray was used to disperse several students who approached officers after Bass was arrested, Durham said. No injuries were reported.
“I think (pepper-spraying) anybody is kind of extreme when it’s a good, clean snowball fight,” freshman Ethan Vick said.
An estimated 200 to 250 students participated in the snowball fight, and campus police were called to the area three times to control the activity, Durham said.
“There were reports of, in addition to snowballs, throwing pieces of fruit (and) chunks of ice,” he said. “The university cannot condone activities like that.”
Some students threw snowballs at passing cars or opened car doors and threw snowballs at occupants inside, he said.
“The kids shouldn’t have been throwing snowballs at cars, and it got really out of hand when they started opening car doors and throwing the snow inside, because that can be really dangerous,” sophomore Keira Masters said.
ECU hasn’t issued any statements to students about the incident and doesn’t plan to review the officers’ response to it, Durham said.
“Students should have known better,” he said, adding that officials felt the police action was justified.
From Chris Duhon’s Article in the New York Post:
AS I watched the inauguration unfold on TV in the locker room with my Knicks
teammates after yesterday’s practice, I felt excited for our country, excited for my best friend Reggie Love and excited for my basketball acquaintance, President Barack Obama.
Reggie Love is Obama’s right-hand man, but his official title is “Special Assistant and Personal Aide to POTUS (President of the United States).”
To me, he’s just Reggie, my teammate for three years at Duke whom I still speak to every day. Through Reggie, I met President Obama and played pickup basketball games with him this past April, May and June – 5 on 5 – in Chicago’s East Bank Club. Reggie invited me to yesterday’s inauguration – an offer I had to decline.
To watch Obama win on Election Night was thrilling after meeting him on a personal level. It felt like Reggie was winning, too. Yesterday, after watching the inauguration ceremony, I just felt very excited because I felt connected to it as well.
It’s a breath of fresh air that we’re going to try to make a change. I texted Reggie right after the speech, “Congrats. Wish I could’ve been there.”
When Obama finished his speech yesterday, all of my Knicks teammates clapped as one. It was emotional. No one in that room expected to see a black president in their lifetime. I didn’t think that was something that would happen, growing up in Louisiana. To witness it actually happen shows that all of what our ancestors worked for and sacrificed for has finally come about.
Obama is very confident and he presents himself as a strong leader. He’ll do whatever it takes to get things done.
The times I’ve spent with Obama at the East Bank Club, he was very approachable, easy to talk to, cracking a lot of jokes. He made me feel comfortable as soon as we met, made me feel loose. It was cool to get to play with him a few times after my last Bulls season ended.
He watches basketball all the time. He and Reggie talk about sports and he loves the Chicago teams. He always asked me, “Are the Bulls going to make the playoffs this year? How good are they going to be?” He was always watching, especially because Reggie keeps an eye on my game.
During our pickup games, Obama was very vocal on both ends of the court, constantly talking, directing guys, telling them where to go. He understands how to play the game. He can only go left, though. He knows how to pass and is a decent shooter.
Hillary Clinton was confirmed by the U.S. Senate Wednesday to be the nation’s new Secretary of State, despite two votes of opposition coming from Senators Vitter (R-LA) and our very own archconservative whack-job Jim Demint (R-Crazytown).
The Senate confirmed Clinton by a 94-2 vote on Wednesday with support from conservative members such as Sam Brownback (R-KS), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and even John Cornyn (R-TX) who made the biggest fuss of anyone before finally adknowledging her qualifications and expertise of foreign policy and voting to confirm her.
So why did Vitter and DeMint vote against her confirmation? Their claims are almost as crazy as they are.
Let’s start with Vitter. You know, the guy who advocates for abstinence-only sex education, professes that gay marriage will bring the apocalypse, voted against the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and unsuccessfully introduced a resolution supporting prayer in schools, but thinks it’s alright to take full advantage of a prostitution ring and cheat on your wife.
Yeah, nobody cares about that guy.
But the surprising thing about Jim DeMint is that he not only voted to confirm her in the foreign relations committee confirmation hearing a week earlier, but he stated that “she could be one of the nation’s best Secretaries of State to date”.
So what happened between last week and this week to make him change his mind? Despite confirming her in the committee, calling her unquestionably qualified and competent, and standing by his fellow SC Senator Lindsey Graham’s comments stating she was possibly the nation’s best diplomat, he cites the most irrelevant issue to vindicate his sudden ‘no’ vote.
Her stance on abortion.
I know what your thinking. He’s up for re-election in 2010, he wants to look like the right-wing conservative who stood up to the big bad Clintons back home, and voting against her would get his name in the papers. It could also be that he traditionally puts politics before country, himself before others, and loves to say that awful ‘A’ word that gets his constituents all warm and fuzzy inside: Abortion.
If you were considering any of these possibilities, you were correct on all fronts. The sad thing is Jim DeMint had already accepted her as the nation’s next Secretary of State when he voted to confirm her in the committee. He was finally going to put down his republican shield and do what was best for the country. For a minute or two, I held my breath, closed my nose and liked Jim DeMint. But alas, he came to his psychotic lack-of-senses and sold out to the religious right and their special interests just like every time before. Abortion? Why not cite her position on whether or not Pete Rose should be inducted into the Hall of Fame? That may be more relevant than citing abortion. Or perhaps the fact that she was a ‘Goldwater Girl’ back in ‘64 before turning into an evil Democrat after graduating college. Why not cite her flip-flop on politics in general?
Why, Senator DeMint? Because he’d have to explain why he flip-flopped on her confirmation. Voting for her, before voting against her. Ahh, the hypocrisy rings all too familiar. Remember, DeMint was an early supporter of the ultimate flip-flopper, Mitt Romney. But putting politics before country is something that makes me cringe even more than watching Jim DeMint talk about values on the Senate floor. But Jim DeMint is just another republican from South Carolina that makes it so satisfying to be a Democrat right now. But that doesn’t change the irresponsibility and utter disrespect he shows the state and the country each and every time he opens his mouth.
And we as voters won’t forget about it come November 2010. You can bet on that.
According to Live 5 News in Charleston, former republican state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was released from a North Charleston halfway house on Thursday. He was transferred to his home and will serve out the remainder of his sentence under house arrest until March 27th. He plead guilty last year to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to ten months in prison.
In an exclusive interview with FitsNews yesterday, Wallace Scarborough attempted to blame every person in South Carolina for his loss on November 4th, except himself. It sounded a lot like the recent interviews with Sarah Palin, where she insisted none of the criticism brought on by her selection to be McCain’s VP was justified by her lack of intelligence, knowledge of national issues, or readiness to be Vice President. She simply blamed everyone else. Well, it didn’t work for her, and it didn’t work for Wallace Scarborough.
A day after dropping his appeal to the South Carolina House of Representatives, Mr. Scarborough cast blame on Speaker Bobby Harrell for siding with the awful and terrible no-good Democrats, SCGOP Chairman Katon Dawson for being too worried about running for national chairman rather than helping those in his own state, his former republican colleagues in the House for being too worried about the ‘politics’ of backing his appeal, and of course let us not forget those 300 (or was it 700?) alleged illegal voters who finally kicked his butt out of office. There was certainly enough blame to go around, but surprisingly no blame goes to himself.
I guess he could have put some of the blame on himself for cheating on his wife with a fellow house member the same week he voted to protect the sanctity of marriage in South Carolina, unloading a firearm in the direction of two SCE&G workers at his mothers home in Charleston, taking insane amounts of money from Howard Rich, being in the back pocket of payday lenders in South Carolina, or perhaps accusing his own constituents of voter fraud without any evidence whatsoever.
When asked about his relationship with Catherine Ceips, he didn’t admit to being engaged to the former Senator, a story we broke on JonesOnPolitics, but he did offer more information than we had ever heard before.
From FitsNews:
“It’s not true,” he says. “But that’s the way the rumor mill goes. Politics is a dirty business, it gets very personal, and I guess that’s just how it is. Catherine and I might one day get engaged, but we’re not engaged right now.”
We stand by our reporting but are very intrigued that Wallace has finally admitted to having a relationship with Catherine Ceips, something he has lied about for the past three years.
And his last spout of whining before surely having Catherine get him some kleenex’s gave us quite a chuckle:
“Voter fraud clearly took place, and I’m disappointed in the Election Commission and I’m frankly disappointed in the way the House handled it,” he says. “The Election Commission didn’t hear the evidence, they didn’t look at the evidence and now thanks to the way the House handled it, the evidence will never be heard.”
Interesting. If you had never followed this story before today, after reading that statement, you would think his appeals and protests were never heard by any authoritative body. But the truth is, the Charleston County Election Commission did hear his evidence. As did the State Election Commission. And these two Republican controlled bodies all unanimously agreed his evidence was circumstantial, petty, and not nearly enough to overturn the elction results. As for the House, they also heard the evidence. Maybe not through a formal hearing in the legislature, but if they had the good sense to not want this appeal to go forward, as Scarborough stated, then they obviously followed this case very closely. For Republicans in South Carolina to not come running to the defense of another Republican clearly shows that Scarborough had no case.
Kudos to FitsNews for setting up the interview that certainly gave me a good laugh this morning.
Governor Mark Sanford will deliver his seventh State of the State address in Columbia tonight at 7pm. It will air on ETV.
It should be interesting if Sanford uses this opportunity to address some of the state’s real issues (public education, healthcare, raising the cigarette tax) or if he sings the same old libertarian song about what government shouldn’t do, can’t do, and won’t do – despite our serious problems.
Or will he use this as the first campaign speech of 2012 Republican Presidential primary? Limited (or non-existent) Government, tax cuts across the board – the rich board, and replacing public education with school vouchers and increase funding for private charter schools are music to the ears of conservative republicans across the country who are longing for a libertarian to take over their broken party. They will most definitely be pleased after Sanford’s speech tonight.
And if you really have nothing better to do, I’d suggest you head over to Palmetto Scoop and get the directions to Adam Fogle’s State of the State drinking game. I’ll be TIVO’ing the speech because I tend to prefer watching ACC Basketball (Duke/GT 7pm) over rich libertarians telling the poorest, most uneducated state in the country that he intends to make their problems worse, just as long as we maintain the lowest tax rates and make George Will feel all giggly inside.
From Parade Magazine:
Dear Malia and Sasha,
I know that you’ve both had a lot of fun these last two years on the campaign trail, going to picnics and parades and state fairs, eating all sorts of junk food your mother and I probably shouldn’t have let you have. But I also know that it hasn’t always been easy for you and Mom, and that as excited as you both are about that new puppy, it doesn’t make up for all the time we’ve been apart. I know how much I’ve missed these past two years, and today I want to tell you a little more about why I decided to take our family on this journey.
When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me‚-about how I’d make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want. But then the two of you came into my world with all your curiosity and mischief and those smiles that never fail to fill my heart and light up my day. And suddenly, all my big plans for myself didn’t seem so important anymore. I soon found that the greatest joy in my life was the joy I saw in yours. And I realized that my own life wouldn’t count for much unless I was able to ensure that you had every opportunity for happiness and fulfillment in yours. In the end, girls, that’s why I ran for President: because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation.
I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential-schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them. I want them to have the chance to go to college-even if their parents aren’t rich. And I want them to get good jobs: jobs that pay well and give them benefits like health care, jobs that let them spend time with their own kids and retire with dignity.
I want us to push the boundaries of discovery so that you’ll live to see new technologies and inventions that improve our lives and make our planet cleaner and safer. And I want us to push our own human boundaries to reach beyond the divides of race and region, gender and religion that keep us from seeing the best in each other.
Sometimes we have to send our young men and women into war and other dangerous situations to protect our country‚-but when we do, I want to make sure that it is only for a very good reason, that we try our best to settle our differences with others peacefully, and that we do everything possible to keep our servicemen and women safe. And I want every child to understand that the blessings these brave Americans fight for are not free‚-that with the great privilege of being a citizen of this nation comes great responsibility.
That was the lesson your grandmother tried to teach me when I was your age, reading me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and telling me about the men and women who marched for equality because they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something.
She helped me understand that America is great not because it is perfect but because it can always be made better‚-and that the unfinished work of perfecting our union falls to each of us. It’s a charge we pass on to our children, coming closer with each new generation to what we know America should be.
I hope both of you will take up that work, righting the wrongs that you see and working to give others the chances you’ve had. Not just because you have an obligation to give something back to this country that has given our family so much‚-although you do have that obligation. But because you have an obligation to yourself. Because it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.
These are the things I want for you‚-to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world. And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have. That’s why I’ve taken our family on this great adventure.
I am so proud of both of you. I love you more than you can ever know. And I am grateful every day for your patience, poise, grace, and humor as we prepare to start our new life together in the White House.
