Tuesday, August 30. 2005
An editorial on the Reading Eagle's web site details a recent incident at one of Rick Santorum's book signings. The incident itself was originally written about in the Wilmington News Journal and has been extensively covered around the blogosphere.
For those of you who may have missed it, here's how the Reading Eagle sums up what happened:
Earlier this month, Santorum appeared at a Barnes & Noble store in Delaware near Wilmington to sign copies of his book, “It Takes a Family.” The store billed the event as a book signing and discussion, but any discussion was limited severely.
Al Mascitti, a columnist for the Wilmington News Journal, reported that college students Stacey Galperin and Miriam Rocek of Newark, Del., and recent high school graduate Hannah Shaffer of Glen Mills, Delaware County, wanted to tell the senator they thought he was wrong about some of his attitudes concerning women.
But before Santorum arrived, one of his advance people heard the girls talking. A short time later off-duty Delaware State Police Sgt. Michael DiJiacomo, who was hired for the occasion through a private security firm, ordered the girls out of the store and threatened to arrest them.
The editorial goes on to say that, by allowing the young women to be kicked out of his book signing, Santorum missed an important opportunity:
Santorum’s people were within their rights to restrict access to the senator, although DiJiacomo’s threat to arrest the teens and his attempt to ban them from the store and nearby mall seem to be way over the top.
But Santorum, who is up for re-election next year, missed an opportunity not only to defend his beliefs but also to engage some teens in political debate. Too often young people are alienated by politics and stay away from the polls on Election Day in overwhelming numbers.
At the very least could have acknowledged the fact that well-meaning people, whether high government officials or college students, can disagree on issues without issuing threats.
Thursday, August 25. 2005
Thursday night, CNN's Newsnight ran a piece about Rick Santorum's bill that would prevent the National Weather Service from providing "a product or service ... that is or could be provided by the private sector."
Basically, Rick wants your tax dollars to pay for the National Weather Service to collect data, then he wants you to have to pay private companies to see the data that the NWS collects. It's not mentioned by CNN, but two of the executives at one of those private companies are Santorum/Republican donors. Video:
Last week, in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Budoff, Rick Santorum claimed that he has publicly expressed concerns about President Bush's policies with regard to the war in Iraq.
That was not the first time Santorum made this claim. On August 10, 2005, Rick told NPR's Diane Rehm, "I have concerns, as everybody does - and I'm sure the President does - about how effective every aspect of this policy has been. And I've been critical of certain aspects of that policy." Here's the audio.
So, what's the problem? Well, as Carrie Budoff reports in today's Inquirer, Rick's office can't find any record of those public criticisms or concerns that Rick claims to have made. Seems like those statements weren't as public as Rick thought. Then again, perhaps Rick was thinking of the following public criticism that he leveled at military action undertaken by the President: “[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.” We can see how this might have confused him. However, he said that in March of 1999. It was a criticism of President Clinton's policy toward Bosnia. Clearly, Rick can be critical of a President's military policies. We just have no evidence that he has been at all critical of President Bush. What does Rick have to say about the missing public criticisms?
"I do a lot of interviews on TV, on radio, with print reporters who don't happen to write everything I say," Santorum said yesterday. "The fact that it hasn't turned up in print doesn't mean I haven't said it."
Yes, because when a loyal member of President Bush's own party makes a statement to a reporter that is critical of the President's Iraqi War policy, any reporter with even a little bit of sense would know that isn't newsworthy and make sure to leave it out of their story. Look how little media attention Senator Hagel has gotten recently.
C'mon Rick.
Wednesday, August 24. 2005
There's an interesting piece in today's Wall Street Journal that shows us a specific example of how Rick Santorum, and the "K Street Project" that he leads, uses influence and subtle intimidation to coerce corporations, associations and lobbying firms into hiring, and donating to, Republicans.
If you're not familiar with the K Street Project, or Rick's role in it, here's what the Washington Monthly had to say about it:
...But there's one confirmation hearing you won't hear much about. It's convened every Tuesday morning by Rick Santorum, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, in the privacy of a Capitol Hill conference room, for a handpicked group of two dozen or so Republican lobbyists. Occasionally, one or two other senators or a representative from the White House will attend. Democrats are not invited, and neither is the press.
"The chief purpose of these gatherings is to discuss jobs--specifically, the top one or two positions at the biggest and most important industry trade associations and corporate offices centered around Washington's K Street, a canyon of nondescript office buildings a few blocks north of the White House that is to influence-peddling what Wall Street is to finance. In the past, those people were about as likely to be Democrats as Republicans, a practice that ensured K Street firms would have clout no matter which party was in power. But beginning with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and accelerating in 2001, when George W. Bush became president, the GOP has made a determined effort to undermine the bipartisan complexion of K Street. And Santorum's Tuesday meetings are a crucial part of that effort. Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican--a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors. "The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street. Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that that was the purpose of what we were doing," says Rod Chandler, a retired congressman and lobbyist who has participated in the Santorum meetings. "It's been a very successful effort."
The WSJ piece focuses on Dan Glickman, a former Democratic Congressman who was recently hired by the Motion Picture Association of America as President and CEO. Here's part of how they describe what has happened since Glickman was hired:
...His biggest albatross has been his Democratic past. Republican activist Grover G. Norquist was quoted in news reports at the time of Mr. Glickman's hiring as saying the choice was a "studied insult" against the Republicans' decade long effort to install like-minded people in top lobbying positions. Sen. Rick Santorum, a conservative Pennsylvania Republican, said he wasn't sure hiring Glickman was "effective" to the movie industry's approach "if they are going to reach across the aisle."
A few months after Mr. Glickman's appointment, Republicans cost the industry more than $1 billion by leaving movie studios out of a major tax bill. Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas of California and Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader, said that including the Hollywood provision in the bill would have cost too much money.
Earlier this year, Mr. Glickman personally wrote a $500 check to Mr. Santorum's re-election campaign. The MPAA sent another $2,000 to Mr. Santorum, who faces a strong re-election challenge next year. Since being named MPAA chief, Mr. Glickman has given 85% of his $10,000 in personal political donations to Republicans. In the previous 18 months, Mr. Glickman steered 95% of his $18,500 in contributions to Democrats, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The MPAA's political action committee, meanwhile, has steered 77% of its contributions to Republicans this year.
They go on to say that Glickman "has been on a Republican recruiting spree," by hiring Republican staff and lobbying firms. As we've said on this site before, Rick Santorum has used his so-called "clout" as the third most powerful Republican in the Senate to build a political machine which, like Tom DeLay’s, is fueled by an unholy alliance of K-Street lobbyists, corporate influence-peddlers and conservative ideologues who misuse government to put their own narrow special interests ahead of the long-term interests of both Pennsylvania and the nation. But I'll bet his Republican cronies are grateful he's using his considerable power to help them.
Continue reading "Santorum's Machine Exposed"
Tuesday, August 23. 2005
Give us your best captions for this one:
Saturday, August 20. 2005
Rick Santorum's book tour was designed, no doubt, to boost the Senator's popularity -- both nationally and in PA -- though there were news reports that some Santorum advisors thought even publishing this book was a crazy idea, much less promoting it as aggressively as Santorum has. It's possible those Santorum aides were right. SurveyUSA interviews 600 adults in each state every month and asks each person whether they approve or disapprove of the job their United States Senator is doing. Coming in dead last this month among the nation's 100 Senators was -- you guessed it -- Rick Santorum. The survey was released Friday morning, and it shows Rick with a -4 net job approval rating, with 46% disapproving of the job he's doing and 42% approving. Before he started showing up on every news-talk show that would allow him a few minutes to promote "It Takes A Family," Santorum's approval rating had been relatively steady -- coming in at 44% in May and at 45% in both June and July. Between July and August (coinciding with his book tour), the rating dropped 3 points, to 42%. But his disapproval rating has been climbing over the summer -- coming in at 38% in May and rising to 46% in August. It's a net change of 10 points overall. During his July 28 appearance on CNN's "Inside Politics," Rick's incredible bravado allowed him to claim that his book represents "the mainstream of thought in Pennsylvania." Well, apparently not. Apparently, Rick is actually completely wrong on this point -- as well as completely outside the "mainstream" of Pennsylvania.
Friday, August 19. 2005
You know how you feel when you call your best friend and they don't call you back? It upsets you, doesn't it?
Well, Rick Santorum says that's how he feels when homosexuals engage in homosexual acts.
Okay, he didn't say exactly that. But it is the parallel that Rick drew when Ed Gordon asked him what he meant by his prior statement that he isn't against homosexuals, he is just against homosexual acts.
When you listen to the audio, you'll notice that Rick gets pretty indignant (almost downright rude) during his answer. We're starting to get the impression that he doesn't like it when interviewers challenge him.
Here's the audio, please listen.
Wednesday, August 17. 2005
Last week, Rick Santorum was a guest on Ed Gordon's NPR radio program. Gordon asked Santorum about Affirmative Action and the Republican Party's perceived hostility towards it. Rick claimed that "Affirmative Action is an old battle, it's on its way out in most areas." Santorum then characterized Affirmative Action as "a government set-aside program for 5% of contracts."
Gordon suggested that African-Americans view Affirmative Action as a much broader issue than a set-aside program. To which, Santorum laughed dismissively and said "Yeah, I know it is to some African-Americans."
During the interview, Rick also made the claim that "more Republicans, by the way, voted for the Voting Rights Act, voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats did." Sorry Rick, that's just plain wrong. You can find vote totals by party at the bottom of this post.
Here's the audio of that segment of the interview.
After Rick's appearance, Ed Gordon held a roundtable discussion with participants whose opinions on Affirmative Action all differed dramatically from Rick's. Gordon's guests were George Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service; Laura Washington, Chicago Sun-Times columnist; and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, co-director of immigration studies at New York University.
Click here to hear the roundtable.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
| Civil Rights Act of 1964
| U.S. House Vote Total = 328-74
217 Dems - 111 Repubs for passage
| U.S. House Vote Total = 290-130
152 Dems - 138 Repubs for passage
| U.S. Senate Vote Total = 79-18
49 Dems - 30 Repubs for passage
| U.S. Senate Vote Total = 73-27
46 Dems - 27 Repubs for passage
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Monday, August 15. 2005
On Aug. 11, when Rick Santorum took U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow on a tour of the Sony Technology Center in Mount Pleasant, he gave us a glimpse of just how seriously deluded he is regarding the state of Pennsylvania's manufacturing sector.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Pennsylvania lost 155,967 manufacturing jobs from the first six months of 2001 through the first half of 2005 (a loss of 18.6 percent in the state's biggest industry sector).
What's Santorum got to say about this? "It's just leaner." Seriously, watch the video below.
"Leaner" probably isn't the word the 155,967 former manufacturing workers who lost their jobs would use. Frankly, it's probably not the word the manufacturing companies would use, either. Video:
Tuesday, August 9. 2005
During last year's Republican National convention, Rick was asked on NPR if he opposes fertility clinics that do in vitro fertilization because at these clinics there are inevitably embryos that are discarded -- and if he's opposed to in vitro fertilization if it does end up with any embryos that will not be implanted in a woman's womb and will not become a child.
His answer: "Yes."
Listen to the audio from the NPR segment.
Thanks to Atrios, we saw the San Diego Union-Tribune has reported that a federal lawsuit was filed on Friday by the National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children against the administrators of California's stem cell institute. The NAA-PC is seeking to stop the institute's work on the grounds that the civil rights of frozen embryos are violated by stem cell research.
According to the Union-Tribune:
The suit was filed on behalf of Mary Scott Doe, a fictitious embryo produced by in vitro fertilization and then frozen and put into storage. Some of these embryos, which people have decided not to use in attempts to have children, have been donated for use in stem cell research, which involves destroying them.
The lawsuit claims the embryo is a person who should be given equal protection under the Constitution, and her destruction violates her right to freedom from slavery.
What do you think are the chances that Rick would support the same type of lawsuit being brought against in vitro clinics?
Tags: santorum, rick santorum
Thursday, August 4. 2005
Due to some activity by those nutty bloggers over at (of all places) redstate.org, an item from Jon Hurdle at Reuters came to our attention earlier today about how Rick Santorum "differed Thursday with President Bush's support for teaching an alternative to the theory of evolution known as 'intelligent design.'"
The article claims Rick told National Public Radio that intelligent design lacked scientific credibility and should not be taught in science classes. This kind of surprised us -- Rick being known in the "intelligent design" community as an ally and all that. But we listened to the NPR interview and he did, in fact, say it.
Click here to listen to it yourself
"I think I would probably tailor that a little more than what the president has suggested...I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom."
I guess Rick doesn't care that this is a 180-degree turn from what he said in The Washington Times back on March 14, 2002 --
"Research has shown that the odds that even one small protein molecule has been created by chance is 1 in a billion. Thus, some larger force or intelligence, or what some call agent causation, seems like a viable cause for creating information systems such as the coding of DNA. A number of scientists contend that alternate theories regarding the origins of the human species — including that of a greater intelligence — are possible.
"Therefore, intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes.
"Yet, opponents of intelligent design contend that by including the theory in the new teaching standards, the separation of church and state will be weakened. This is false. Proponents of intelligent design are not trying to teach religion via science, but are trying to establish the validity of their theory as a scientific alternative to Darwinism."
That's an article he wrote, by the way, not some reporter misquoting him out of context. He either doesn't care about this incredible flip-flop, or he hasn't yet heard of the Internet, where just about anyone can find stuff he wrote three years ago in about 30 seconds. To read more about Santorum and the issue of "intelligent design," read the SantorumExposed.com issue page titled " Why does Rick Santorum want to leave teaching a world-class science curriculum behind?"
Tuesday, August 2. 2005
Rick Santorum says that the "liberal" view of freedom is "not the kind of freedom our founders envisioned." Elaborating, he says "It is an entire culture that focus (sic) on immediate gratification and the pursuit of happiness and personal pleasure. And it is harming America."
Actually, Rick, here's what those wacky founders wrote in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (emphasis ours)
Not only does Rick have the audacity to claim that he knows what sort of freedom the founders envisioned, he believes that one of the three "unalienable Rights" they chose to enumerate is harming our country. Here's the video: Oh, and of course he blames our country's divorce rate on "the left." Even though the divorce rate in America is actually highest in the " Bible Belt"--hardly a bastion of liberalism. This is a sitting United States Senator arguing that our founders were wrong in their belief that we are all entitled to the "pursuit of happiness." In the same breath, he says he knows what those same founders envisioned for this country. Honestly, we wish that there was something funny about this. There isn't. Tags: Santorum, Rick, Politics
Monday, August 1. 2005
Today's Washington Times reports on Rick's challenge to Senator Hillary Clinton to publicly debate whether it takes a family or a village to raise children.
Sen. Rick Santorum yesterday challenged "radical" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to a serious debate on who is responsible for raising children--the family, the government or the children.
..."I'd love to have a serious debate," Mr. Santorum said.
"I believe her view is one that says 'government' and 'top-down.' I believe my view is the view that's held by most Americans, which means we need strong families and strong communities, and we don't need government really disassembling those institutions, which I think her view of the world does."
With all due respect to the Washington Times, if you watch the video of Rick's remarks you'll see that he didn't say "disassembling those institutions", he actually said "dissembling those institutions." We hate to see Rick misquoted. Here's the video:  Windows Media QuicktimeThat debate sounds like a great idea to us. But, we have one piece of advice for Rick based on the video clip of his challenge to Sen. Clinton. Before you debate Hillary you may want to open the dictionary and learn the difference between dissemble and disassemble. Here's a hint, one of them means to hide facts.
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