Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard Arrested By Sam Levine Posted: 10/20/2014 5:55 pm EDT Updated: 55 minutes ago Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard (R) was arrested on Monday and charged with 23 felony ethics charges, the Associated Press reported. Hubbard, who is also the chair of the Alabama Republican Party, faces charges that include using his office for personal gain and voting for legislation with a conflict of interest, Al.com reported. Hubbard has claimed that he did nothing wrong and called the investigation a witch hunt, according to the AP. According to WHNT, Hubbard's indictment is part of an ongoing public corruption investigation in the state.
#HubbardGate Read the full indictment - http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/10/mike_hubbard_indicted.html
'Kissing Congressman' Vance McAllister Gets Very Little Love From Donors By Sarah Harvard Posted: 10/20/2014 3:02 pm EDT Updated: 3 hours ago While kissing babies may be good politics, kissing a congressional staffer hasn't been at all beneficial to a married Louisiana lawmaker's campaign. Rep. Vance McAllister (R-La.), who became known as the "kissing congressman,"raised less than $15,000 from just 13 donors from July through September. According to The Washington Post, McAllister had to lend his campaign $795,000. Late last year, surveillance video surfaced of McAllister passionately kissing his scheduler, Melissa Hixon Peacock, who was married to a longtime friend and political supporter of the congressman. Under initial pressure to resign, McAllister announced that he would not seek re-election. But this past June, he changed his mind, explaining that his district "needs a strong, conservative voice in Congress." Nonetheless, the self-proclaimed socially conservative congressman has lost plenty of political support since the kissing scandal. In his 2013 special election campaign, for example, he had the backing of the reality television stars of "Duck Dynasty," who have become conservative celebrities. But this time, a member of the "Duck Dynasty" clan is actually running to unseat McAllister. A new ad from Republican Zach Dasher, one of eight candidates trying to oust the congressman, features his uncle and "Duck Dynasty" patriarch, Phil Robertson. At an outdoor festival in September, Robertson even said that McAllister was not "godly."
I find the timing of this indictment troublesome. Two weeks before an election? Republicans took over control of the alabama legislature a few years back. This has the distinct flavor of payback. I read the charges, and they sound a lot like the way politics is conducted. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Every quid pro quo is not a bribe or using office for private gain. I just find it suspicious that only republicans seem to get charged for this kind of thing. Is it possible that they are that much more corrupt? Many democrats, eg Harry Reid, became quite wealthy while earning relatively modest salaries form government. Just good businessmen I guess. I will withdraw my scepticism when Sen. Kay Hagan and her husband are indicted for slurping from the green energy slush fund. Taking money from taxpayers concerns me a lot more than rich people doing favors for pols.
Colorado Dems: We Caught James O'Keefe and His Friends Trying to Bait Us Into Approving Voter Fraud James O'Keefe, the conservative provocateur, has been on the prowl in Colorado, the setting of a close Senate race between Democratic incumbent Mark Udall and GOP Rep. Cory Gardner, as well as a nip-and-tuck governor's contest. Last week, O'Keefe and two of his collaborators tried to bait Democratic field staffers into approving voter fraud involving Colorado's universal vote-by-mail program, according to three Democratic staffers who interacted with O'Keefe or his colleagues. James O'Keefe: Democratic staffers in Colorado recently came to believe they were the subject of an O'Keefe operation after campaign workers became suspicious about would-be volunteers who had asked about filling out and submitting mail-in ballots for others. Recently, the 30-year-old O'Keefe has targeted the Senate campaigns of Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor and Kentucky Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes by filming undercover videos of staffers or the candidate. Last Tuesday, a man who appeared to be in his 20s showed up at a Democratic field office in Boulder wanting to volunteer to help elect Udall and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), according to a Democratic staffer who met with him and asked not to be identified. The man introduced himself as "Nick Davis," and he said he was a University of Colorado-Boulder student and LGBT activist involved with a student group called Rocky Mountain Vote Pride. Davis mentioned polls showing the race between Udall and Gardner was tight, and he asked the staffer if he should fill out and mail in ballots for other college students who had moved away but still received mail on campus. The Democratic staffer says he told Davis that doing this would be voter fraud and that he should not do it. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/colorado-dems-james-okeefe
Start counting luke. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- McCain Will Push For Ground Troops In Iraq, Syria If GOP Wins The Senate SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- If Republicans gain the Senate majority in November, President Barack Obama could face pressure from Congress to send ground troops into Iraq and Syria. "Frankly, I know of no military expert who believes we are going to defeat ISIS with this present strategy," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a Pacific Council on International Policy conference on Saturday. "We may be able to 'contain,' but to actually defeat ISIS is going to require more boots on the ground, more vigorous strikes, more special forces, further arming the Kurdish peshmerga forces and creating a no-fly zone and buffer zone in Syria," said McCain, who will, due to seniority, become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in January if the GOP takes the Senate next month. McCain also said the U.S. needs to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in order to defeat the Islamic State, the militant group also known as ISIS or ISIL. The Arizona senator has been campaigning in support of GOP candidates for the upper chamber, and has indicated that he is eager to lead the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees the country's military and is considered one of the most powerful committees. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/20/mccain-troops-iraq-syira_n_5986756.html and yep , he wants to go into Iran also.