Tag: RNC Convention

Scott Roeder, the 51-year-old accused of murdering abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in his Wichita, Kans. church, had a long history of ties to a violent right-wing extremist group, had previously threatened another abortion provider, and had just that week vandalized Tiller’s clinic.
Just as federal law specifically penalizes hate crimes, the law also makes it a federal crime to threaten or commit violence against abortion providers, or to vandalize their clinics. Yet as The Washington Independent revealed last week, the criminal law was not being enforced.

El Paso County is Colorado’s most-populated county. It’s also, undeniably, a GOP stronghold with a rich legacy of political hijinks and shenanigans — usually inspired by Republicans. And that leaves plenty of progressives leery that, come Election Day, Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink will do everything he can to make it difficult, or at least unpleasant, for non-Republicans to vote. Which leads us to Democrat state Sen. John Morse's claims of Balink's 12-point strategy to suppress the vote.

"Republican by day, Romeo by night, robbed by morning," is the headline that the St. Paul Pioneer Press slapped on a story about a Denver attorney and GOP delegate who took a woman to his hotel room, got naked, got slipped a mickey and then got robbed of a reported $120,000 in cash and bling during the Republican National Convention.

It was one of the chief vows of the Democratic Party as it took control of both congressional chambers in 2007: to sever the cozy relationships between lobbyists and lawmakers brought to light by the Jack Abramoff scandals.

Over at Salon, Avi Steinberg has written a highly entertaining account of his time patrolling the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis, headquarters of the Republican National Convention, for a (unnamed) private security firm. He explores the perils of tight pants and Sarah Palin, the noshing habits of secret service officers and the unexpected joys of chanting “Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!” Steinberg also comes up with an amusing taxonomy of the drinking habits of various GOP devotees:

Barnstorming their way across the nation, the GOP presidential ticket will be in Colorado Springs Saturday morning. But as our Michigan Messenger colleague Alexa Stanard notes, the McCain-Palin speeches in Michigan Friday were nothing more than convention night left-overs.

A dispatch from our Iowa Independent colleague Jason Hancock with huge implications for Colorado's renewable energy economy — ed. Republicans unanimously passed a platform on Monday that calls for the federal government to end a mandate that gasoline contain a set amount of ethanol, but Iowa Republicans say they oppose the proposal.

John McCain's speech Thursday night drew 500,000 more viewers than Barack Obama's record-setting speech a week earlier, Nielsen Media Research reports. More than 38.9 million watched McCain accept the Republican nomination for president on eight networks, according to preliminary television ratings.

Darkness had fallen over the city when Sen. John McCain stepped out from the shadow created by his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, after she lashed out at the Democrats and the media and intellectual elites the night before. He did so as a man declared politically dead in July 2007 when, facing dismal poll numbers and a campaign bleeding money, he let most of his staff go. Now resurrected, McCain delivered an acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination that reinforced his image of the elder statesman from the party in power that would keep America the great power in the world.

It’s hard to tell if this video by Blip.tv user “George McCain” is for or against John McCain. At the Republican National Convention this week, campaigners passed out stickers that read “Proud Bush-McCain Republican” to delegates — including an apparently flummoxed Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) — on why they’re proud to wear it. Is it campaigning or culture-jamming?