Andrew Brietbart says he cares a lot about the truth.

I guess that’s only true when he isn’t the one being questioned.

These slimy racists that set ACORN up are perpetrating a fraud with the aid of Republican Congressman (Steve King and Thad McCotter), Fox News and Andrew Brietbart. These “new media” charlatans give the rest of us out here trying to do real journalism a bad name.

The truth is that O’Keefe never wore the pimp outfit into an ACORN office. Instead, he posed as a candidate for Congress that wanted to help a young woman caught in the trappings of prostitution. Supposedly, he wanted to help her, and her fellow prostitutes escape the clutches of a brutal pimp by finding a place for them to live.

The ACORN personnel aren’t blameless. Some did and said some pretty stupid things and deserved to be fired. But their stupid actions in no way give O’Keefe, Brietbart and Fox license to lie and smear with impunity.

The funny part about this is that just 5 years ago, cap and trade was seen by many conservative groups to be the ideal market-oriented approach to environmental regulation. Not so much anymore.

Anyway, Bond and Hutchison were talking up alternatives to reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. I couldn’t figure out why one would care about reducing fossil fuel use if global climate change wasn’t a concern. So they must be concerned about climate change, right? But that didn’t make sense to me because… well, they are Republicans and Rush Limbaugh says climate change is a hoax. And you know, Rush Limbaugh, with all of his PhD’s, is the Republican authority on everything…

I decided to figure out what was going on here…

Back around 2005, there was some turmoil within the Republican Party. Leadership was changing, and David Dreier, the telegenic and always immaculately-groomed Congressman from California was often mentioned in conversations regarding filling the new leadership posts. Alas, he was passed over…

Why?

Because it is an open secret that David Dreier is gay. And no homosexual can hold a leadership position in the homophobic Republican caucus.

Actually, I’m being unfair.

Washington Republicans aren’t homophobic, at least so far as I’ve been able to tell. Hell, they knew about Mark Foley for years.

No… The problem is that the Republican base (and its hard-core Christian-right constituency) will not tolerate a Republican Party that elevates a gay to leadership. And with Dreier widely known to be gay, they saw scandal on the horizon.

Honestly, I feel really badly for David Dreier. He must feel so all alone.

I worry about this post. I worry that picking on poor David Dreier like this may imperil my ability to speak with other Hill Republicans; I may have touched a third rail.

But… As Mike Rogers points out… What other group in society is expected to protect its enemies? David Dreier stood quietly as George Bush and Karl Rove ran their “Save Traditional Marriage” campaign. Dreier, before being passed over for leadership, was constantly on my television telling me how great George Bush and Dick Cheney were. The man, at the very minimum, aided and abetted haters. And I haven’t even begun to discuss his record on Prop. 8, DOMA, DADT or any of the other discriminatory legislation embraced and passed by (mostly) Republican hypocrits.

Just before I started recording, I said to the Senator, “I’ve read that you are the only senior official from Louisiana not to have commented…” then the video piks up and you hear me say, “on the judge that refused to marry an inter-racial couple.”

Vitter responds: “I don’t think that’s the case”

I say, “Have you commented? What did you have to say about it?”

Any reasonable Senator would have stopped whatever they were doing to vociferously make a clear denunciation of the miscreant magistrate at issue.

Vitter looked at me and smiled, silently… and waited for the elevator doors to lose.

UPDATE @ 7:53 EST 10/21/09] Some quick and dirty research for the naysayers.

DC ST § 22-403 Whoever assaults another with intent to commit any other offense which may be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years.

§ 22-2801. Robbery.
Whoever by force or violence, whether against resistance or by sudden or stealthy seizure or snatching, or by putting in fear, shall take from the person or immediate actual possession of another anything of value, is guilty of robbery, and any person convicted thereof shall suffer imprisonment for not less than 2 years nor more than 15 years.

§ 22-2802. Attempt to commit robbery.
Whoever attempts to commit robbery, as defined in § 22-2801, by an overt act, shall be imprisoned for not more than 3 years or be fined not more than $500, or both.

There is no crime of battery in the District of Columbia.

Bottom line: if I cannot behave this way toward Senator Cornyn without putting myself at the mercy of the law, and if we live in a country of laws, not men, then he is no less liable for his behavior than I am and should be treated exactly the same way I should be expected to be treated if I tried to slap a camera out of his hand while he was taking pictures of me.

Certainly not a beat-down, or anything like it, but if I had behaved toward him the way he did to me, I woulda been spread-eagle on the floor with guns trained on me.

He got off the Hart Senate office building subway, just like any number of Senators before him. I pointed the flip cam at him and began walking with him, asking him about the Franken amendment. He tried to slap the camera out of my hand and then tried to grab it from me. Fortunately I was filming the whole time.

I’m wondering how to play it. It was clear that I didn’t want to be touched, and if I remember correctly, any unwanted touching constitutes assault. I’m making the video public and demanding an apology. Without one, I will file a criminal complaint against the Senator.

At bottom, the idea here is that celebrities have been sued for assaulting paparazzi. Unless somehow Senators are different and above the law, they have no right to put their unwelcome hands on another person. Like I said, if I had behaved similarly, there is no doubt that I would have been arrested.

Finally, there is the 4th Estate angle. Senator Cornyn obviously doesn’t have any respect whatsoever for the free press or 1st Amendment.

(This is a quick, less than complete, post. I’ll update later, but wanted to get something up this evening)

Last week, Al Franken introduced his own piece of legislation – an amendment purposed to ban the government from contracting with companies that force rape victims into binding arbitration. The language is actually more expansive; it covers all Title VII workplace discrimination. At bottom, the amendment, if passed into law, would prevent the government from awarding contracts to any corporation that requires its employees to submit to binding arbitration for workplace discrimination claims.

The Amendment came up in the context of rape. A woman working for KBR in Iraq had been gang-raped by the men she worked with. The company first sought to cover up the rape. Next, they forced her back to work – alongside her alleged rapists. When she went to sue the company, she learned that she was prevented from doing so by the “binding arbitration clause” in her employment contract.

When the Senate investigated the issue of rape in Iraq, Franken developed his amendment. It was passed last week, 68-30. All 30 “nays” were Republican men.

I spoke with two of them, John Thune and Thad Chochran, this afternoon.

First up, John Thune:

Next, Thad Cochran:

You’ll remember Dr. Gingrey was the Republican Representative from Georgia that offered some mild criticism of Rush Limbaugh, saying that he wasn’t in leadership and that Boehner and Cantor and the party leaders were doing a fine job; Rush should pipe down.

The very next day, Dr. Gingrey called in to Rush’s afternoon show and prostrated himself before the impotent and drug addicted entertainer and groveled, begging forgiveness.

That made him a special target of mine.

Every time I saw the Congressman on the Hill, I’d ask him if there was anything he wouldn’t do for Rush. Would he wash Rush’s car? Would he write Rush an Oxycontin prescription? How about Viagra for Rush’s next sexual tourism trip to the Dominican Republic?

I’m kind of proud of myself for stopping short of asking the Congressman if he’d felch Limbaugh on demand…

Anyway, every time I ran into the Congressman, something like this would happen:

Until early last week…

On that day, I caught the Congressman without his jacket. And without his phone:

I’m glad he could join me in laughing about this. No, not the Nazi stuff, but his artful dodge. As far as that goes, I’m actually coming to enjoy the company of several Republicans. Sure, they are dishonest and morally-challenged miscreants, but I’m pretty sure it’d be fun to share a beer and a hooker with them… That is, if I could convince them to share their beer…

Absent “crazy” circumstances, that is.

I apologize for the mistake in explaining the set-up of unprecedented filibustering of your own party’s bill – I used the word “minority” when I should have said “majority”. heh. If I was a print reporter, you never would have caught it.

Anyway, I had seen this in the Politico earlier today, so I was really happy to see Senator Pryor emerge from the tunnel:

Moderate Democrats did draw plenty of inspiration from Snowe – but instead of using her “yes” vote as a reason to embrace health care reform, fence-sitters hailed the caveats in her public statement Tuesday as a rationale for withholding their own judgment.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson said his colleague from Maine wasn’t “forecasting what her future votes might be” when she cast the lone Republican vote for the Finance bill.

Likewise, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, whose own stance on health care remains an open question, cautioned, “I think she’s been careful to say that she supports it coming out of committee, but no guarantees on final passage because it’s going to change quite a bit between now and then.”

This reporting seemed pretty useless to me, but it sounded vaguely ominous. I thought it would be a good idea ask point blank: would he support a filibuster of a Senate Health Care Reform bill? Here’s his answer:

At Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, Senator Lindsey Graham asked her about anonymous comments offered by a range of lawyers. These comments were negative, mostly having to do with the Justice’s temperament.

Leaving aside the fact that Justice Scalia’s acidic demeanor never seemed to bother any of the white male Senators called upon to confirm him, I did think it was notable to ask a nominated Justice to comment on accusations made by anonymous accusers.

I especially found it interesting because there is no shortage of rumors regarding Senator Graham’s sexual orientation. That puts Graham in almost the same position Justice Sotomayor except nobody that I know of has asked Senator Graham to respond to the rumors. What’s more, if Graham did have gay relations while a member of the military, he broke the law.

Yesterday there were two items in the shadow of health care that interested me…

First, Fox News has been cut off by the Obama administration (at least for the remainder of this year) as retribution for their network refusing to carry the Presidential health care address and its sub-par editorial standards. That was something I thought was long-overdue, but I wondered what Republicans thought of it.

The second story that I think could be particularly important is that Rush Limbaugh is having trouble purchasing a football team. I’ve said it before in other venues, but I’ll say it again here: the reason Rush Limbaugh is so influential has nothing to do with his audience size, per se. After all, only 20 million (out of over 300 million) Americans listen to him in any given week.

No. The reason Limbaugh is influential is that of all the “news” media personalities, he dwarfs his competition. Chris Matthews has an audience of, on a good day, 2 million. Bill O’Reilly – the highest-rated TV host, doesn’t even come close to 5 million in a night. Even the network news anchors can only salivate over Rush’s numbers; nobody else in “news” media comes close.

So what ends up happening is that all of these egos that spend their time chasing ratings look over at Rush and attempt to follow his lead.

What they forget is that Rush is an entertainer. You cannot maintain journalistic integrity and draw the numbers Rush gets. You have to hype fear and unwarranted victimism. That’s the formula for Beck, O’Reilly, Dobbs, Hannity and everyone other Limbaugh mini-me.

Alas, if you are an ego chasing ratings, that lesson comes hard.

Anyway, here are a few videos of me chasing these stories:

Steve King:

John Kline:

Phil Roe:

(btw: As you know, for the most part I’m not particularly fond of Republicans. But I like Phil Roe. He, like I did, spent some of his youth growing up in a home with a dirt floor and no running water. After he got done with this interview, he hopped on the subway. I’m not sure of this, but I believe our Representatives get a per diem to cover transportation costs. Any Congressman Roe chose the subway instead of a cab or car service. Kudos to him!)