Funny how Charles Rangel's ethics violations were flogged for weeks but you don't hear a peep about this one

Remember Mean Jean Schmidt? She's the vile wingnut who defeated then-netroots darling Paul Hackett for Ohio's 2nd Congressional district seat in 2004.

Well, the very same House Ethics Committee that gave a "public admonishment" to Rep. Charles Rangel for ethics violations has found that Mean Jean has taken bribes from some shady sources.

Howie Klein:

Schmidt hasn't had any impact at all in Congress and is widely considered an embarrassment and one of the least influential members of the House. The only other thing she's known for is her dogged opposition to the legitimate aspirations of the Amenian-American community. Schmidt, a dim bulb, isn't exactly someone would expect to even know anything about Armenia or Armenians. But she has been taking bribes from shady Turkish sources and helps run their anti-Armenian efforts. Friday the House Ethics Committee issued their report on her corruption, but decided not to recommend expulsion or arrest, claiming, in effect, that she was too dumb to know she had violated House rules. You have to be pretty dumb to not know taking bribes is against the rules... and the law.

The report is here.

It may very well be that Jean Schmidt is too much of a moron to know that what she did was unethical. And getting the vapors over Congressional bribes is kind of laughable right now, when the Koch brothers are openly buying Tea Party members of Congress. But the issue for me is one of spin -- that when a Democrat is accused of ethical lapses, or found to have committed such lapses, it's flogged in the media for weeks. But when it's a Republican, even as insignificant a Republican as Jean Schmit, it lands in the Friday news dump and you don't hear a peep about it.

Shorter Republicans: It's Our Job to be WATBs

I'm beginning to think the Republicans may start liking being the minority party. This gives them the right to whine and kvetch without coming up with any answers of their own. They're screaming bloody murder about the Democrats' budget, but have zero plans to come up with a counterproposal:

Breaking with the House, Senate Republicans say they do not intend to offer a full counterproposal to Mr. Obama’s sweeping $3.6 trillion spending blueprint, a decision that will spare them from outlining potentially painful decisions required to bring federal books more in line with their call to hold down spending, cut taxes and reduce the deficit.

“The responsibility of the majority is to produce the budget,” said Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, senior Republican on the Budget Committee, “and we think it is more constructive to point out how we would improve their budget.”

With a month to go before Congress is supposed to pass a budget resolution, Democrats say the absence of a competing Senate Republican plan makes Republican complaints about the Obama approach ring hollow. Would Republicans, they ask, continue to keep the costs of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan off the books? Account for the costly annual change to protect middle-class taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax? Set up a disaster fund to prepare for emergencies?

“They are long on criticism and short on a plan,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. “They have a communications strategy instead of an economic one.”

House Republicans said they intended to deliver a comprehensive alternative to the Obama plan to show how they would respond to the federal government’s deepening fiscal difficulties but were not ready to provide details.

As they try to reassert themselves as guardians of fiscal discipline after their own years of deficit spending, Republicans have been providing a steady stream of complaints depicting Mr. Obama’s plan as spending too much, taxing too much and borrowing too much.

The effort is being made with more than the usual level of cooperation between House and Senate Republicans, with Republican leaders of the two chambers appearing in tandem and lawmakers repeating their antibudget criticism almost as a mantra.

In contrast to the first weeks of the Obama presidency, the attacks are aimed squarely at Mr. Obama, whose popularity initially shielded him from Republican criticism.

“Republicans in the House and Senate, with some degree of cooperation and collaboration, are going to attempt to both challenge the assumptions and the content of the president’s budget,” said Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 Republican in the House.

Democrats are trying to exploit the absence of a Republican alternative, creating a Web page with a clock counting the hours since the Obama budget was introduced on Feb. 26 with no Republican alternative put forth. It lampoons Republicans as the “Party of No.”

Some Republicans acknowledge that the constant repetition of their budget message could turn it stale in Washington, but they say such persistence is required to break through with the general public.

With their majorities in the House and Senate lost, Republican leaders say that an effective communications strategy is their best hope. They say they have little ability to influence the legislative debate, particularly in the House, if Democrats are determined to press ahead with Mr. Obama’s plan to take on health care, climate change, education, transportation and other major issues.

“As I told my colleagues, we don’t have enough votes to legislate,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader. “We are not in the majority. We are not kind-of in the minority; we are in a hole. They ought to get the idea out of their minds that they are legislators. But what they can be is communicators.”

These people just don't get it. They don't get it that Americans now understand that no, we don't get to create our own reality; that "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes" is an easy choice to make and "me" isn't the answer. The Republicans are still stuck in the early days after 9/11, when a frightened population wanted desperately to believe an incompetent and malevolent president because there was really no choice -- it was believe the spin or realize that our nation had been hijacked by crazies (and not the crazies with the Arabic names, either). So today, all the Republicans have is pages from the Bush Book. Lie and spin, and if you do it long enough people will believe you.

I'm not sure that's going to cut it anymore. I hope I'm right.

Why Americans don't know what to believe

I woke up this morning to a news report that a New York businessman has has been arrested for plotting to provide money to terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

Looking for more information, I found these two very different treatments of the same story.

First, CBS News:

Terrorism charges brought Friday against the administrator of a loan investment program claimed that he secretly tried to send $152,000 to the Middle East to buy equipment such as night vision goggles for a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, 53, of Ardsley, N.Y., pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to an indictment accusing him of terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and other charges. The charges carried a potential penalty of 95 years in prison.

Alishtari, also known as Michael Mixon, was detained pending a court appearance next week after Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan S. Kolodner said Alishtari was a danger to the community and a risk to flee. He was arrested on Thursday in Manhattan, prosecutors said.

Alishtari's court-appointed lawyer, Richard Greenfield, said he was not familiar enough with the case to present a bail package. Outside court, Greenfield declined to comment.

The indictment said Alishtari tried to support terrorists between June and December by accepting an unspecified amount of money to transfer $152,000 that he believed was being sent to Pakistan and Afghanistan to support an Afghanistan terrorist training camp.

He believed the money would be used to fund the purchase of night vision goggles and other equipment, the indictment said.

[snip]

CBS News has confirmed that Alishtari is a donor to the Republican Party, as he claims on his curriculum vitae. Alishtari gave $15,500 to the National Republican Campaign Committee between 2002 and 2004, according to Federal Election Commission records. That amount includes $13,000 in 2003, a year when he claims to have been named NRCC New York State Businessman of the Year.

Alishtari also claims to be a lifetime member of the National Republican Senate Committee's Inner Circle, which the NRCC describes as "an impressive cross-section of American society – community leaders, business executives, entrepreneurs, retirees, and sports and entertainment celebrities – all of whom hold a deep interest in our nation's prosperity and security."

Now, the New York Post:

A Westchester businessman and purported peace activist was nabbed by the feds for allegedly plotting to funnel more than $150,000 to terrorists at training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, an American-born Moroccan from Ardsley, was ordered held without bail yesterday for agreeing to send $152,000 overseas to pay for night-vision goggles and other equipment for terrorists during an FBI sting operation.

The accused terror buyer was nabbed by the FBI Thursday and charged with providing material support to terrorists, as well as money-laundering and wire-fraud charges, which carry a maximum of 95 years in prison.

Prior to his arrest, Alishtari, 53, also known as Michael Dixon, had agreed to cooperate with law enforcement. But the deal fell through before he provided substantial assistance, according to a source close to the case.

Alishtari also is accused of swindling millions of dollars in a bogus Bronx-based loan program.

Defense lawyer David Greenfield entered a not guilty plea on behalf of Alishtari and declined further comment.

Alishtari drew media attention in 2003 for launching an annual movie project in Florida called Global Peace Film Festival.

The self-described activist has also posted poetry on numerous Web sites advocating peace and radical Muslim ideology, as well as personal pledges to dedicate his time and money to stopping child slavery, fraud and violence.

You've got to love the sinister linkage between peace and radical Muslim ideology. That's the kind of framing even George Lakoff would love.

But the more important question is the Post's (and most of the other media outlets reporting this story) neglect to mention Alishtari's Republican connections, which are easily documentable, and it's attempt to tie him to "peace groups" (read: Cindy Sheehan, Moveon.org, the Democratic Party) by noting his Orlando-based film festival and his crime of posting wussy-ass poetry on web sites.

It sounds to me that Mr. Alishtari, whatever his connections to terrorism, was doing what all good businessmen do -- covering both sides of the plate, just in case.