GOP freshmen spent millions in taxpayer dollars on mass mailings

WASHINGTON— Republican freshmen who came to Congress last year promising to transform Washington’s free-spending culture are no different from most other lawmakers in at least one respect: They mailed out millions of taxpayer-funded flyers and brochures during their first year in office.

Tennessee’s first-term lawmakers were no exception.

Republican Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Jasper spent more on mass mailings than all but two other House members last year. He sent 669,436 pieces of unsolicited mail at a cost of $282,385, according to a review of records compiled by the chief administrative officer of the House.

Republican Rep. Diane Black of Gallatin ranked No. 24, spending $194,910 to mail 252,632 brochures, flyers and letters.

The state’s two other freshman lawmakers — Republican Reps. Chuck Fleischmann of Ooltewah and Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump — also spent more than most of their colleagues. They ranked 137 and 147, respectively, each spending more than $80,000.

…Together, the 87 GOP members of the freshman class sent more than 25.6 million pieces of unsolicited mail last year at a cost of nearly $9.8 million. Of the 10 lawmakers who spent the most taxpayer money on franked mail, eight were GOP freshmen. Of the 25 who spent the most, 18 were GOP freshmen.

Many of the flyers and brochures that Tennessee’s GOP freshmen sent out last year focused on their efforts to slash government spending.

“We have changed the conversation in Washington — from how much can you spend to how much you can cut,” read a brochure that Black sent to constituents last year.

Bush ’04 pollster: Change in attitudes on gay marriage across the board

Former President George W. Bush’s pollster for his 2004 re-election, Jan van Lohuizen, has put out a memo to Republican operatives suggesting a shift in the way the GOP discusses same-sex marriage, a piece flagged by Jonathan Martin.

It notes what recent same-sex marriage surveys have found, which is a change in public support “at an accelerated rate with no sign of slowing down.”

It adds, “The increase in support is taking place among all partisan groups. While more Democrats support gay marriage than Republicans, support levels among Republicans are increasing over time.  The same is true of age: younger people support same sex marriage more often than older people, but the trends show that all age groups are rethinking their position.”

And it notes that people’s attitudes have moved within the GOP on whether to provide “basic legal” protections to gay people, with a proposed shift in language about understanding rights.

The full memo is after the jump.

Kansas Governor Signs Bill Allowing Pharmacists And Doctors To Deny Women Birth Control

A bill that allows pharmacists and doctors to deny women access to contraception has been signed into law by Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. This new law is just one of many bills that the Republican governor has signed since he came into office. He has recently signed legislation that pressures abortion clinics with new regulations, legislation that imposes long waiting times to get an abortion, and legislation that bans insurance companies from covering abortion procedures.

Basically, any woman in Kansas could walk into a pharmacy to pick up a birth control prescription and be denied her medication by the pharmacist. All the pharmacists needs to do is claim to be acting on his or her religious convictions. And what’s worse, the pharmacist doesn’t have to refer the prescription to another pharmacy. Likewise, doctors also can deny women contraception and use religious liberty to get away with it. Even a woman who becomes pregnant through rape could be denied access to birth control.

This new law is just one more step toward a complete ban on abortion and contraception in the state of Kansas. It gives doctors and pharmacists the right to tell women what medication they can or cannot use.

Rep. Allen West: LGBT Workplace Discrimination ‘Don’t Happen Out Here In’ America

Rep. Allen West has a record of headline-making remarks, and on Thursday, in an interview with ThinkProgress, West again made comments that some may find offensive and inaccurate. LGBT discrimination in the workplace, he said, isn’t a problem in this country; it’s not a big issue with small businesses.

ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes asked, What about something like a law that say that it’s illegal to hire or fire people because they’re gay?” West responded, “That don’t happen out here in the United States of America.”

Virginia House Vote Sinks Openly Gay Judicial Nominee From Position In General District Court

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The House of Delegates, voting in Tuesday’s early morning hours, blocked an openly gay Richmond prosecutor from appointment to a General District Court judgeship in the city.

Tracy Thorne-Begland received 33 yes votes, 31 no votes — all from Republicans — and 10 abstentions in his bid to become what gay-rights advocates said would have been Virginia’s first openly gay jurist. Twenty-six House members, including seven Democrats, did not vote.

A minimum of 51 votes in the 100-member House is required for election.

RNC Calls Obama’s $500K Conference Spending Cap, Proposed By A Republican, ‘Wasteful’

The Republican National Committee mocked guidelines issued by the Obama administration on Friday that will make agencies seek special permission to spend over $500,000 on a conference, calling the policy “wasteful.” What the RNC might not have realized is that members of their own party proposed a cap in the exact same amount.

New spending guidelines issued on Friday in the wake of the GSA scandal require top level officials to review conference spending over $100,000 and generally bans conferences that cost over $500,000.

The RNC quickly criticized the guidelines, writing that “such a strict spending limit” would force the GSA to choose between either a mindreader or magician.

“With wasteful policies like this it’s not hard to figure out why Obama has run the three largest deficits in history,” RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said in a statement, mocking the guidelines as “capping all conferences at the low, low price of $500,000 (unless they are granted ‘special permission’).”

…Ironically, $500,000 is the exact same cap contained in an amendment proposed by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who is known as one of the biggest spending hawks in D.C. The House unanimously passed a bill which contained the same $500,000 cap that was proposed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).

 

Pardoned Mississippi Felon Faces New Charge

Suspect Had Been Pardoned By Governor Haley Barbour

 

(CNN) — One of the men controversially pardoned earlier this year by Mississippi’s outgoing governor could land back behind bars after being charged with driving drunk and causing an accident that killed an 18-year-old woman.

A Pontotoc County, Mississippi, grand jury has charged Harry Bostick with drunken driving leading to a death, felony drunken driving and fleeing the scene of an accident where a death occurred, according to the indictment filed on Thursday and obtained Monday by CNN. The accident happened in October.

The former Internal Revenue Service investigator was one of nearly 200 convicted criminals, including four murderers, whom Gov. Haley Barbour pardoned shortly before leaving office earlier this year. The pardons elicited an uproar, with Attorney General Jim Hood leading a charge to overturn them. But after legal challenges, they were upheld.

Bostick was still going through a court-mandated drug rehab program when he applied for his pardon last summer. On September 30, the Mississippi Parole Board sent its review of Bostick’s application to Barbour, recommending a full pardon in a 3-2 vote.

A week later, on October 7, Bostick was driving under the influence again, according to the Mississippi Highway Patrol. Charity Smith attempted to pull out onto a highway just outside Tupelo when Bostick’s truck slammed into the side of her car, the patrol says.

Smith was killed, and her older sister suffered serious injuries. Bostick was jailed for violating his probation from his previous DUI cases.

When he received the pardon in January, the convicted DUI felon still sat in an Oxford, Mississippi, jail cell, awaiting formal charges for the arrest tied to that case.

 

Barbour had said that he wasn’t aware of Bostick’s October 2011 DUI arrest when he chose to pardon him.

 

But e-mails obtained by CNN show that the governor’s office did, in fact, know about it.

Barbour, a Republican who served eight years as governor, sparked a storm of criticism after granting about 200 pardons as he left office last month. Attorney General Jim Hood, a Democrat, has asked a circuit court to void some of the pardons because some of those who received them may not have followed a notification requirements in the state constitution. Ten of the pardons granted by Barbour went to current inmates, including four serving life sentences for murder.

Mississippi Supreme Court rules Barbour pardons valid

…The Republican pardoned 198 people before finishing his second term Jan. 10, including four convicted murderers and a robber who worked as inmate trusties at the Governor’s Mansion. Of those pardoned, 10 were in jail at the time.

Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood challenged the pardons. Hood argued before the Supreme Court on Feb. 9 that some pardons didn’t meet the requirements of the Mississippi Constitution, which says people seeking pardons must publish notices for 30 days in a newspaper.

…In a 6-3 opinion, the justices wrote “we are compelled to hold that — in each of the cases before us — it fell to the governor alone to decide whether the Constitution’s publication requirement was met.”

The 10 people who were incarcerated when Barbour pardoned them had the most at stake. Among those, five have been held in prison on a temporary restraining order pending the outcome of Hood’s legal challenge. It was not immediately clear whether they would not be released.

The other five had already been released by the time Hood persuaded a lower court judge to issue that restraining order.

The Public Eye: Capital-area voter fraud suspects have criminal histories

The owner and an employee of a company accused of fraudulent voter registration drives in Sacramento County have been convicted of crimes of deception in the past.

The owner of Momentum Political Services, Monica Harris, has an extensive criminal history, including a prison sentence for stealing from a family she befriended and buying a van with funds stolen from a youth agency, court records show. Two of her victims called Harris a “professional con artist.”

Harris’ employee, Remy Heng, recently pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Sacramento to his role in a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme in Northern California.

Jill LaVine, Sacramento County’s registrar of voters, has turned over evidence of what she called registration fraud to the California Secretary of State’s Office. She said that at least one-fourth of the 31,000 registration cards submitted by Harris and her circulators since September have been rejected for inaccuracies.

…Momentum Political Services was hired by the Republican Party of Sacramento County to conduct voter registrationdrives. LaVine said her office found numerous examples of people of having their political party affiliation switched to Republican against their wishes.

Maker of Plan B to Hold Big Contraceptapalooza Fundraiser for Mitt Romney

Zygotes are more important than women, but money is more important than zygotes. At least if you’re Mitt Romney. The staunchly unstable politician, who holds the mistaken (but convenient) belief that the morning after pill causes abortions, will be holding a big, fancy fundraiser at the Florida home of the chairman of the Board of Directors of Teva Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes Plan B. Does this mean that, by Romney’s flawed logic, he’s profitting from what he thinks are abortions?

Romney’s doublespeak on the issue of abortion and birth control has been frustrating but fascinating. When he was running for Senate in 1994, he responded to allegations that he wasn’t “pro choice,” he was “multiple choice” by saying,

“My mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that, or be a multiple choice, thank you very much.”

 

Oceana County minister to be sentenced for sex crimes

OCEANA COUNTY, MI – An Oceana County minister charged with sex crimes involving a female relative will be sentenced to prison in May.

Timothy George Bender, the preacher from the Burning Bush church in Shelby, is expected to be sentenced to 24 months to 15 years in prison for two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Bender pleads to sex charge

The Shelby area man charged last December with two criminal sexual conduct counts for allegedly engaging in sexual intercourse with a stepdaughter, resulting in two children, will likely spend at least two years in prison.

Ex-mayor pleads not guilty to felony theft

Former Davenport mayor and police officer Pat Gibbs Sr. has been charged with felony theft in connection with his job at a Davenport pawn shop.

The 53-year-old, who was mayor from 1992 to 1998, turned himself in on an arrest warrant Thursday, records show. The warrant was issued on Tuesday.

He entered a plea of not guilty during his arraignment Thursday, was fingerprinted at the Scott County Jail and released on his own recognizance.

…Gibbs is accused of “misappropriating property” and making off with $9,760 from Del-Rich, according to a police affidavit. He is accused of deleting legitimate jewelry transactions and then creating fraudulent purchase tickets by creating fictitious customers.

He signed the fake customers’ names and pocketed the money from the purchase, the affidavit claims. It also indicates the thefts occurred between January and April of this year.

An investigation by Davenport police included surveillance footage from Del-Rich.

…Court records show a history of financial troubles for Gibbs, including a 2002 bank foreclosure on his home and bankruptcy protection the same year. Records also show a number of small-claims cases, filed against him by a bank, credit-card companies and local service companies.

In 2007, Gibbs called for the resignation of former Davenport Alderman Ron VanFossen over legal troubles involving domestic abuse. He petitioned then-mayor Ed Winborn to appoint him to VanFossen’s seat, because he lost the seat to VanFossen in the 2005 election.

He was not appointed to the council.

A registered Republican, Gibbs ran as an independent in his failed bid for sheriff in 2001.