Newsy.

Olivia Nuzzi Writer and journalist. New York Magazine, POLITICO Magazine, The Daily Beast, NSFWCORP, AlterNet, The Huffington Post, New York Daily News. Tweet @ Me: http://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi

[mrdestructo]

"Oh, crikey!" I said, as he started humping my butt. "You’re humping my butt real good like that."

"Shut up, Darlene," he said, as we butthumped.

"My name is Amy."

"Shut up," he said again emptying a can of Krylon spray paint into the back of my head. I realized he’d said my name wrong on purpose...

[olivianuzzi]

I now work at The Daily Beast!

As of today, I am a full time political reporter for The Daily Beast. You can read my reporting here!

[olivianuzzi]

POLITICO Magazine: The Man Who Keeps Christie Up At Night

This being a story about New Jersey, it begins, of course, in a diner. Assemblyman John Wisniewski is just finishing up breakfast at the Sunnyside on Main Street in his hometown of Sayreville. Sitting with him this late January morning are a member of his staff and the mayor of another town in his legislative district. Wisniewski appears patient and thoughtful as he talks with the mayor about a possible development deal—but his fingers, nervously tapping on the table, give him away. The assemblyman clearly has something bigger on his mind.

Wisniewski is the reason the world knows about the political disaster that is Bridgegate. As chair of the state assembly’s transportation committee, he was the one who unearthed the smoking gun email from Governor Chris Christie’s fired Deputy Chief of Staff, Bridget Kelly—“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”—to Christie’s Port Authority appointee David Wildstein. It was a discovery that would turn lives upside down, Wisniewski’s among them. The formerly obscure state lawmaker has made Christie seem scattered and frantic, and as the scandal continues to unfold, it threatens to knock the once seemingly invincible governor out of contention in the 2016 presidential race, or worse.

READ MORE

[olivianuzzi]

The Daily Beast: Better Call Rosemarie!

Meet the Lawyer Suing Christie Over Bridgegate

In Fort Lee, New Jersey, perched high above the Hudson River, is a white, slightly weatherworn building. It houses the law offices of Rosemarie Arnold, advertised in bold white lettering above the doorway. At the entrance of the office driveway, a sign informs you that you are at “The Personal Injury Center.” The.

Six days ago, a group of six New Jersey residents filed a lawsuit in federal court in response to revelations that suggested at least one official in Governor Chris Christie’s administration closed lanes of the George Washington Bridge as an act of political retribution against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat. Rosemarie Arnold is the civil trial attorney who is representing those (now ten) residents. They are suing Christie, the Port Authority, ex-PA officials David Wildstein and Bill Baroni, and Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly.

Arnold’s website advertises her practice areas: car accidents, dog bites, workplace injuries, burn injuries, workplace discrimination, dangerous and defective products, truck accidents, construction accidents, fall-down injuries, spinal-cord injuries, and wrongful death. When we emailed, she responded to me from her iPad. Her sign off included a series of emojis: three ambulances, five bags of money, four shamrocks, and a rose.

Inside her office waiting room, which smells overwhelmingly of Italian food, a downtrodden client sits on a shiny, brown leather chair. He taps his foot and rests his head on the wall behind him, which is overflowing with thumb-tacked thank-you cards. The rest of the walls are decorated with framed press clippings, highlighting Arnold’s many high profile legal battles.

On the cover of US Weekly, with the headline “My World Was Shattered,” is an article about supermodel Christie Brinkley’s divorce. Arnold represented the young girl with whom Brinkley’s ex allegedly had an affair. The entire wall is devoted to this one case, with three other full-page clippings from the New York Post.

As I read the walls, Arnold, who sports a deep tan and dark brown hair, wizzed by, dressed down in jeans, a white tank top and a pink flannel shirt,  “I’m running late, be with you in a minute!” Arnold barely looks 25, which is about how long she has owned her practice.

Cars were coming like within millimeters of each other.

In front of a very large box of Advil, she began by explaining the terror that was the gridlock on the bridge. “People were screaming at each other, and cars were coming like within millimeters of each other, like trying to cut each other off and be first! It was stressful; it was anxiety producing; and it made everybody late!”

Arnold told me one of her clients was late to work and fired. She said she knew of a “newspaper delivery company that delivers The Times” who was affected, and has a client who owns a doggy daycare “right at the foot of the bridge” that couldn’t have pooches picked up or dropped off.

Arnold said her ten plaintiffs are just the ones they named, and she “expects the class to consist of over 100,000 people.” Arnold adds, “each persons’ damages need to be calculated, but I can’t imagine this case is worth less than tens of millions of dollars.”

The smoking gun text by Bridget Ann Kelly (“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”) is what Arnold says will win her case for her. The rest of the documents, she told me, weren’t even that important. And Arnold, a former supporter of Christie, said his gross misjudgment and mismanagement in Bridgegate has turned her. “The governor to me is a clear-cut defendant in this case. He is the captain of the ship, and he has publicly stated that this was his fault and his administration failed. He actually publicly stated that they acted, and these are important words, with ‘callous indifference,’ that’s purposeful conduct, that’s not negligence, okay? And the governor has proven to be a bully who takes steps to retaliate against those who don’t support him, so of course suing him puts people in a position where they might be subject to his wrath. I don’t fear that.”

Given Arnold’s familiarity with tabloids and television shows like Inside Edition, where she once appeared, I offer a comparison to Gloria Alred.

Arnold gives me a look.

“This is a serious law firm.”

[olivianuzzi]

Debunking The Alternate Bridgegate Theory

Saturday's New York Post asked "Was Bridgegate a fight over judges?" running with an idea Rachel Maddow introduced to the cable-viewing masses on Thursday evening. The alternate theory suggests that the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge may not have been an act of political retribution against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, but against Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg instead. 

Since he has been in office, the issue of New Jersey Supreme Court has been a contentious one for Christie. In 2010, he declined to reappoint a sitting justice, spurning State Senate Democrats who retaliated by rejecting all of Christie's later nominees. On August 12, 2013, Christie chose not to nominate a justice he had personally endorsed because "I was not going to let her loose to the animals," ("the animals" being Christie-speak for Senate Dems, in this case). The following day, Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie's now-fired deputy chief of staff, sent the smoking gun email to David Wildstein, the now-resigned Port Authority Director of Interstate Capital Projects: "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." 

Rachel Maddow (and the Post) meets the logical fallacy: you know, the one that says, if event A happens, then event B happens, so event A must have caused event B. 

Weinberg has long been a Christie foe. In 2009, she was Jon Corzine's running mate. Christie asked the press to "please take the bat out on her" in 2011. The alternate theory is that high ranking Christie staffers closed the GWB lanes to retaliate against Weinberg because of the Senate Democrats' general refusal to cooperate with Christie's wishes for the State Supreme Court.

Are you making a connection here? 

No? Me neither. 

First, Weinberg only became Senate Majority Leader in 2012, after Senator Barbara Buono, Christie's gubernatorial opponent, was ousted by Democratic leadership. It's not like she's been running the show since Christie assumed office. She's probably not even running the show now. 

Second, Senator Loretta Weinberg is, as you may be able to guess from her title, a State Senator. That means she represents a Legislative District, not a town. Weinberg represents LD 37 which is comprised of 13 different towns, including, yes, Fort Lee. But Weinberg doesn't live there (she lives in Teaneck, which is not even close to Fort Lee), nor is her office there (it's also in Teaneck). In Weinberg's last election, she beat her opponent by nearly 15,000 votes, and she took Fort Lee by a full 1195 votes. If Weinberg were to lose Fort Lee, it is more than likely that she would still get elected. But were Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich to lose Fort Lee, he definitely would not get to continue to be Mayor of Fort Lee. Duh. 

Third, so far, no one has uncovered anything in the thousands of Bridgegate documents released last week that suggests this was about Weinberg. There are no references to Legislative District 37. No one seems to be trying to mess with Teaneck. What have been found, however, are lots of references to Mark Sokolich and Fort Lee. Resigned Port Authority executive Bill Baroni repeatedly refers to Sokolich, who is Croatian, as "the Serbian." David Wildstein, the other resigned Port Authority executive called him a "little Serbian." Bill Stepien, Christie's now-fired campaign manager and top adviser, calls Sokolich an "idiot." Nobody gave Weinberg any fun nicknames!

Fourth, Sokolich sent an email on September 12 to Baroni, informing him that "members of the public have indicated to me that the Port Authority Police Officers are advising commuters in response to their complaints that this recent traffic debacle is the result of a decision that I, as the Mayor, recently made." It is possible that higher-ups in the Port Authority ordered police officers to inform Fort Lee residents that this was Sokolich's fault. In which case, how again does this negatively impact Weinberg? Why wouldn't the Port Authority Police Officers have told Fort Lee residents that the traffic was the result of a decision made by her? It is also possible that police officers arrived at the answer themselves that yeah, the mayor of a town would probably have to sign off on something that would impact his residents so severely. In which case, why bother to go to such lengths to ruin Weinberg if you're not even going to make sure her constituents get the message that they should be mad at her? 

Finally, there is a question of how many conspiracies could anybody run at once? Certainly, people in the Christie administration could have been, and obviously have been, dumb enough to jeopardize the governor by screwing up the GWB and putting it all down on paper. Or, they could have been smart enough to screw up the GWB in order to retaliate against a politician (Weinberg) without mentioning her or making it clear to anybody that she was being punished. But it defies logic and credibility to suggest that they could have done both. 

Stop trying to make the Loretta Weinberg theory happen. It's not going to happen.

By Olivia Nuzzi 

[olivianuzzi]

POLITICO Magazine: 15 Chris Christie Controversies You Missed

Democrats in New Jersey have been celebrating what you might call Chris Christiemas this week. When documents were released strongly suggesting that senior members of Governor Christie’s staff were behind the George Washington Bridge lane closures in Fort Lee, the Gov’s ideological opponents breathed a sigh of relief. Christie’s unrivaled political skill and, as Matt Katz outlined here in November, ability to drive a narrative of his choosing, have meant that until now, The Story of Chris Christie As Told By The National Media is one that Christie has largely written himself. As one New Jersey Democratic strategist told me, “the press had basically inaugurated him already.” But Christie’s political career has been riddled with controversies big and small, most of which have been paid little attention by those outside the Garden State. And while perhaps none of these kerfuffles placed anyone in imminent danger quite like Bridgegate did, at least a few of them might have spelled the end of another, less media savvy politician’s career. READ MORE

[olivianuzzi]

New York Magazine:

Ex-Christie Rival: Echoes of Nixon In Bridgegate

[olivianuzzi]

Public Service Announcement: Nelson Mandela & Morgan Freeman? Not The Same Person.

NOPE.

NOPE.

NOPE.

NOPE.

NOPE.

NOPE.

NOPE.

NOPE.

NOPE.

NOPE.

Better luck next time, guys!

[olivianuzzi]

Happy holidays from the Olivia Nuzzi's! 

By Chris Michael

[olivianuzzi]

Nice Guys Finish Third

By Olivia Nuzzi

Published by NSFWCORP August 3, 2013

"Counting the new Senatorial Democratic Chicks," reads the header of a 1934 political cartoon by Clifford K. Berryman of the Washington Star. Eight chicks, newly hatched, sit in a box: Maloney of Connecticut, Minton of Indiana, Radcliffe of Maryland, Moore of New Jersey, Donahey of Ohio, Guffey of Pennsylvania, Gerry of Rhode Island and Truman of Missouri (yes, Harry.) Holding a ninth egg, with a bespectacled man’s head sticking out of it, its shell cracking, a farmer, "Jim," says to "Miss Democracy," "You may have to set a while longer on this one, Auntie!"

The bespectacled man in the cartoon was Senator Rush D. Holt, Snr. of West Virginia. The reason he needs more time in the nest is, at age twenty-nine, he’s still months away from being able to legally serve in the Senate. An FDR liberal at the time of his election, by the end of his first and only term, Holt Snr. would be a rabid, isolationist conservative. Eventually, he would be a Republican. When he sought the Democratic nomination for a second term, Holt Snr. finished third.

Today, 79 years after it was first published, the cartoon hangs on the office wall of Representative Rush D. Holt, Jr. Holt is seeking the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate in the special election which will fill the seat of the late Senator Frank R. Lautenberg. If current polls reflect the final outcome, Holt, like his father, will finish third.

* *

It’s nearly 8 p.m. and the halls outside of congressman Holt’s office are empty and quiet. Holt’s office is empty, too. A vote is underway on a series of amendments to the 2014 Energy and Water Appropriations bill for which Holt has, at the last minute, traveled to Washington from New Jersey.

Holt’s Legislative Assistant had appeared, let me into the office to wait, and then vanished. Every surface is piled high with papers and every shelf crowded with books: All ten volumes of “The Thomas Jefferson Papers”; books about science; “Mosques From All Around the World”; books about government. A large bowl filled with bags of gummy candy, like the kind you hand out to trick-or-treaters on Halloween, sits on a coffee table. Hanging in a closet are dozens of button-down shirts.

Holt walks through the door, arms full with more papers, and introduces himself as just “Rush.” He’s thin and appears younger than his sixty-four years, his (mostly) gray hair notwithstanding. He speaks as though he is always delivering good news and has a habit of using the phrase “on balance” when discussing an issue.

"Have you eaten?" he asks. He hasn’t — and suggests that we walk down to the National Democratic Club: "Maybe I’ll have a piece of pie."

Rush Holt is a busy man. Lautenberg’s death, on June 3, at the age of 89, wasn’t a shock — his illness wasn’t a secret. But etiquette, and decency, dictated that candidates keep their pre-campaigns slow and secret until the seat was actually vacant. Now any preparations his would-be successors might have already made have moved from that slow, hidden walk to a public sprint.

On June 4, Governor Chris Christie announced, to much flak, that the special election was to be held on October 16. Holding a second, separate election in addition to the scheduled general November election - in which Christie is up for a second term - will cost the state an estimated $24 million. Holt seems slightly in awe of the governor’s audacity as he speculates about what, specifically, drove Christie’s “self-serving” decision. “I believe one of the reasons was, he wanted his name at the top of the ballot; he didn’t want the federal election on the ballot above him… I mean, maybe it was vanity. I assume it was also a calculation that he would do better, and he wanted to have a really strong showing so that he could run for president. That was his thinking, I’m sure.” About Christie, he later added, “I don’t know how he gets away with as much as he gets away with.”

When Lautenberg announced in February that he would not be seeking reelection, the names of all of the contenders in the current Democratic primary were mentioned as possible candidates - except for Holt’s. The Mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, filed papers to run for Lautenberg’s seat in January - a move that, at the time, Lautenberg’s senior aides called “disrespectful.” Asked about his aides’ comments, Lautenberg said, “I have four children, I love each one of them. I can’t tell you that one of them wasn’t occasionally disrespectful, so I gave them a spanking and everything was OK.” The comment was spun into dozens of “Lautenberg Says Cory Booker Needs a Spanking” headlines, which had the neat effect of elevating Booker to become Lautenberg’s primary rival and most likely successor. Sure enough, in the Monmouth University poll, Booker is currently polling at 52 percent. Also in the Democratic field are Representative Frank Pallone, who is polling at 10 percent, and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, at three percent. Holt is wedged between Pallone and Oliver, at eight percent.

* *

Rush Dew Holt, Jr. was born in Weston, West Virginia. His father, who was first elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1931, died when Rush was six years old. “I learned a lot from him,” Holt tells me. “I didn’t learn practical politics, but I learned how much good a person can do in politics. After my father died, for years, for decades, I would run into complete strangers who, figuring out who I was, would say how much my father meant to them, or how much he helped them, or what it meant to them to see an honest, conscientious politician like my father.” Although at first, he tells me, he “resisted the idea” of following in his father’s footsteps.

Holt Sr. was last elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1954. When he died the following year, his wife assumed his position until the end of his term in 1957, immediately after which she was appointed as Secretary of State in West Virginia - becoming the first woman to hold the title. She served until 1959. “She didn’t present herself as a trailblazer,” Holt says. “She was - I now understand - raising three kids, as a single mother, and being the first woman to do a number of different things. I’ve always admired her, I really have.”

In 1966, Holt graduated from Landon, a private prep school in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside of the District of Columbia. He received his B.A. in physics from Carleton College in Minnesota and both an M.D. and P.h.D. in physics from New York University. There was never any question as to what Holt wanted to do: “I was going to be a scientist. And I was.”

While completing his PhD at NYU, he became a member of the physics faculty at Swarthmore College, where Holt, a Quaker, also taught religion and public policy. From there, he went to the State Department where he monitored the nuclear programs in Iraq, Iran, the former Soviet Union and North Korea. Beginning in 1989, Holt was an Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, which is the largest alternative energy research center in New Jersey.

* *

"It had crossed my mind, from time to time, that I might make a good legislator," Holt tells me. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a nail-clipper. "But if that was my career goal," he traces the nail clipper over each of his fingernails, "I was kind of slow getting around to it. I didn’t get into congress until I was fifty - I like to think of that as mid-career." He puts the clipper back into his pocket without having clipped a nail.

Holt’s personal political involvement began in student government and transitioned to volunteering for local and congressional campaigns in Colorado, Minnesota, Arkansas and “really, wherever I was living at the time.”

In 1996, Republican incumbent Dick Zimmer from New Jersey’s 12th congressional district gave up his seat to run for the United States Senate. Holt entered the race for the Democratic nomination. With 24 percent of the vote, he came in third place. Lambertville Mayor David DelVecchio won the nomination, going on to lose to Republican Michael Pappas whose campaign focused largely on opposing abortion rights and gun control.

In 1998, Holt secured the congressional nomination and with it, the general consensus that he had no chance of election. But, as Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray would later tell me, Holt “has keen political instincts.” Insisting that the man should be separated from his policies, throughout his campaign, he stuck by President Clinton. Meantime, the incumbent, Pappas, stuck by the conventional wisdom of the spring and summer of 1998, that Clinton would probably be out of office by the 1st day of the new year and that the Republicans would score massive gains in that November’s midterms. That is when Pappas became one of the last Republican congressmen to try a Clinton-related stunt on the floor of the House.

On July 21, 1998, Pappas revealed that he had written a song. To the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” he sang in support of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr:

Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr  Now we see how brave you are  Up above the Pentagon sting  Like a fair judge in the ring  Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr  Now we know how brave you are  When subpoenas and lies are gone  When obstruction shines upon  Then you throw your trump cards down  Twinkle, twinkle, all brought down  Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr  Now we see how brave you are  Then the Congress in the dark  Thanks you for your courage and spark  We could not see which way to go  If you did not lead us so  Twinkle, Twinkle, Kenneth Starr  Now we see how brave you are

Just ten days before the election, trailing Pappas by 20 points in the polls, Holt launched a campaign ad called “Mike Pappas: Out of Tune; Out of Touch.” Holt won by five thousand votes.

(Pappas told me that he had nothing to say about the New Jersey special Senate election or Rush Holt. I asked him if he would take my phone number in case he thought of something he would like to say.

"Yeah, Okay."

I asked him if he had a pen.

"Yeah."

I gave him the area code and paused.

"Uh huh!"

I gave him the exchange.

"Yeah."

I gave him the last four digits.

"Okay."

I’m confident he didn’t write down my phone number.)

* *

Holt and I are still looking for a place to talk. After determining that the National Democratic club with its loud music and raucous crowd of elderly lawmakers is too noisy, Holt leads us a few yards away, down a cement path, to the National Democratic Headquarters. “You used the word ‘fiddles’ in your response to President Obama’s climate change speech,” I say as we determine that the building is closed. “And I thought ‘Nero fiddled while —’” “‘While Rome burned,’” he hays in unison with me as he fights to open the door, pushing the handicapped automatic-door button repeatedly. “Congress fiddles,” he says as the door finally opens. “Hi, we want to do an interview, can we go in there?” Holt asks a cleaning woman as he points to an empty conference room.

As a vacuum drones nearby, Holt explains to me that he believes he is “the most liberal member of Congress” - an assessment shared by the National Journal. Although, “that was a little bit of an alphabetic artifact because Barbara Lee and Pete Stark, I think, and some others, were tied with me, but I was earlier in the alphabet, so I was listed first.” As Holt gets up to move the mop and bucket that are keeping the conference room door open and allowing the sound of the vacuum in, he dismisses Pallone; “I would argue I am clearly more progressive than he is.” He doesn’t bother to address Oliver. Instead he thinks “of my race being with Cory Booker.”

"I’m Rush Holt," begins Holt’s first senate campaign ad, "and I’ll be the first to admit, I’m no Cory Booker."

Booker is the very prominent mayor of Newark. He is known for his social media prowess and heroic, often live-Tweeted actions, like saving a woman from a burning building, shoveling a constituent out of a snow-covered driveway and rescuing cats from trees and dogs from crates. He has appeared with Oprah and he has delivered nearly half a dozen commencement speeches. Booker is so visible that when he gave only one TV interview in April of this year, his relative absence from our screens was addressed by New York Magazine.

"The work of the Senate is not done 140 characters at a time," Holt’s ad said, taking a jab at Booker’s constant presence on Twitter. The work of the Senate, he continued, is "done with time on task. None of the problems facing this country are solved quickly with a fine speech, no. It’s solved with diligent work." He later added, "I Tweet in moderation."

Hitting Booker on his celebrity is “an argument not worthy of Rush,” says Democratic strategist Brad Lawrence of Message and Media, who worked with Holt from his 1998 campaign until his most recent congressional race. He now works for Booker. Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray seems to agree, “The celebrity attack is not getting him anywhere,” he tells me. “New Jersey doesn’t know Cory Booker all that well, but he has a national reputation so they expect that he has substance.” Continuing, “the attack would have to be that Booker is empty behind his celebrity, but Holt will not go deep into the dirt to attack him. He’s not willing to sling the mud.”

If Holt is known at all in New Jersey, it is because of his science background, advertised with “My Congressman IS A Rocket Scientist!” bumper stickers. When the stickers were initially proposed to Holt, he vetoed the idea. He is not, after all, a rocket scientist; he is a nuclear physicist. “My Congressman COULD Blow Up The World If He Felt So Inclined, But He’s A Liberal, So Don’t Worry About It!” would have been a more accurate declaration, albeit a less catchy one. Nevertheless, the bumper stickers were made.

"I would be," he tells me, "the only scientist in the Senate." Scientists, he explains, "tend to believe that not all solutions are equally good, and so they tend to look for the best solution. The other thing about scientists is, we are trained, always, to say that the facts have the last word. I, probably more than most, demand evidence in my decision making."

Though Holt has needled Booker, he has not impaled him. His campaign has, largely, been one of ideas. For Wall Street reform, he has suggested a “transaction tax,” which is “a small speculation tax applied to each share of stock bought or sold.” The policy could generate, Holt claims, $43 billion a year. For climate change, he’s offered a tax on carbon emissions. For education; doubling the maximum Pell Grant from $5,550 to $11,100.

He is passionately against domestic surveillance, having just recently proposed a bill to repeal the Patriot Act. “Bush and our country, out of fear, with President Bush leading the way, did some things that I have called ‘un-American,’” Holt says. Would he use that same phrase, “un-American,” to describe what the Obama Administration has done by continuing the Bush Administration’s policies, I asked. “Yes, I think so.”

"There aren’t two classes of people, one class above suspicion and the other class subject to suspicion. America doesn’t do that," he says, emphatic. "The two principal ideas in the Fourth Amendment! One, that enforcement and intelligence operatives have to prove to an independent judge that they know what they’re doing, so they can’t just run off on hunches or wild goose chases. The other, that they can’t cast suspicion on people without good reason…" He finally takes a breath. "That’s what really makes America; it is one of the founding pillars of America. It is why, for centuries, some immigrants have come to this country to avoid the knock on the door in the middle of the night…We’ve never tolerated that in the United States. It is a kind of inequality that is unacceptable."

* *

I try to nudge Holt into saying that the New Jersey primary is a metaphor for style versus substance in American politics. He won’t be drawn.

Instead he says, “If your whole record is commencement speeches, It’s a little hard to know where you are on the hard choices facing our economy…I have, I think, an A+ rating from the Humane Society. I haven’t arranged with a television crew to film me petting or saving an animal.”

A slight smile. “I’ll leave it at that.”

[olivianuzzi]

Michael D. Brown: The Senator Who Never Was

By Olivia Nuzzi

Published by NSFWCORP August 22, 2013

WASHINGTON - "I got my start working for Jimmy Carter," Senator Michael D. Brown tells me. "I worked on his reelection campaign… I didn't do a very good job."

It is very early in the day and District of Columbia Shadow Senator Brown and I are outside of the African American Civil War Museum, where he is scheduled to attend a press conference. We sit at a table, beneath a large umbrella that does almost nothing to shield us from the sun. Brown is relentlessly friendly. Every so often, while he speaks, he reaches out to the umbrella that stands in the middle of the table and grasps it's shaft, flashing a ring he wears which features a silver etching of a hoofed mammal. We have been talking for nearly half an hour and I still don't really understand what a Shadow Senator does.

"My brother doesn't really know what I do," Brown laughs.

Does he get to vote? No.

Does he get to hold hearings? No.

Does he get to debate bills? No.

Does he get to approve Secretaries of State? No.

Does he get to reject anything and everything the House has done? No.

Does he have a staff? No.

Does he get paid? No.

"So what do you do?"

"Unfortunately, I do whatever I can do."

"Are you like the Queen of England?"

"I don't have the really nice jewelry and the really nice house, but yes."

The District of Columbia elects two Shadow Senators “every six years, like all other US Senators," Brown explains. The position was created as part of DC’s efforts to gain full admittance to the Union as a State. "You can't have a make believe government unless you do it right." Sure enough, DC elects Shadow Representatives too: every two years.

So, what does a Shadow Senator do each day?

"I go talk to school children, I lobby on Capitol Hill, I handle constituent problems, people come to me with stuff and we do the best we can to work it out. But the problem is that everything is extended to me is a courtesy, and Democrats on the Hill sometimes extend courtesies to me on the basis that I'm an elected official. I call myself the Blanche Dubois of politics, 'cause I get along on the kindness of strangers."

Shadow Senator Brown was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1953. He moved to Montgomery County, Maryland with his parents who passed away when he was fifteen. He was subsequently raised by an older sister. After studying political science at the University of Maryland and getting his start in politics on the aforementioned Carter campaign, Brown went to the 1980 Democratic Convention. That, he told me, "led to a job at the DNC," where he stayed for roughly four years. After leaving the DNC, Brown ran a public interest group "which was not me," and then he began consulting, which he continued to do at his own company for twenty-five years. "My wife used to say I was looking for a job for twenty-five years," he says, amused.

Brown's transition from man in the shadows to man in the elected shadows was, as he tells it, somewhat casual. "One day I said to myself, here I've been in the periphery of politics for all these years," he begins. "I always volunteered to do stuff. For example, I've had some role at the last ten Democratic National Conventions: I've been a super delegate, I've been the guy that allowed access to the podium, I've been somebody that did credentials - I've done all these different things. So I was always involved in one way or another, even though I ran a direct mail firm, I did a lot of campaign work. And one day I decided, you know, I had a relative that fought in the Revolutionary War, and isn't this stupid that we don't have rights in the District of Columbia? I found out about this office and I looked in to see when the guy who had the office's term was up so that I might run, and I found out there were two senators! I never knew there were two senators! I'm like, holy crap! There's two senators - and one of them's up! So I ran against her."

To prove he was serious about his campaign, Brown purchased the domainShadowSenator.com. Life soon imitated domain and Brown won all 132 precincts. I suggest to him that perhaps Hillary Clinton should follow his lead and purchase UnitedStatesPresident.com while she's running for office.

He thinks for a second. "Maybe should call her."

Shadow Senator Brown loves to tell of how his title often confuses people or places him in unique situations. "Outside the District of Columbia, it's amazing the way I'm treated," he says, laughing. "Because people don't understand that the people of the nation's capitol don’t have the same rights that everybody does…I go to things and they say, 'we're not sure if we announce you first or the governor first - do you know what the protocol is?' and I go," he adopts a tone of mock deference, "oh, let the governor go first…"

"Oh!" he inhales sharply, this is one of my favorite stories…"

"My kids, they hate what I do and the fact that I stand up and give speeches spontaneously. We're in New York on vacation… and we decide to take the kids to see the Lion King. So I buy these tickets and I go up to the box office, I say Michael Brown, and the guy says 'do you have some ID?' so slip my ID under the thing and he says 'where did you buy these tickets!' -- only New Yorkers would do this -- and I go 'online,' and he goes 'oh, Jesus Christ.' and he just walks away and he comes back and he slips a card under the thing and says, 'look, we have seventeen theaters on Broadway, if you need a ticket, you call this guy, you don't go on the Internet, you got it?' and I go 'okay,' and he goes, 'I don't know what the hell you expect me to do for you now, because the show starts in an hour, but go away, come back and I'll see what can do for you,' so I come back and he says 'ok, we put your three kids in the front row, but you and your wife are still in the back with the orchestra, there was nothing we could do for you.' I have stuff like that happen, and it's nice. I don't ever try to abuse it, but people are very kind to me. it's been an interesting experience…"

He slips seamlessly into his next story.

"I get a call one day and they say 'Senator Clinton would like to have breakfast with you, are you available?' - 'cause I'm a Super Delegate, so I go 'yeah, I think I can squeeze her in,' and O go to this thing and there is a podium and I'm up there talking to somebody and she walks in the room, so I go and I sit on a love seat behind the podium and she walks in and realizes as she's walking to the podium that somebody is going to announce her, so she comes and she sits on the love seat next to me, so I put my arm around her and I say, you know, I whisper in her ear, 'Senator Clinton, I'm the senator from the District of Columbia and I'm a personal friend of Maggie Williams' - who's just been hired to be her campaign manager - and she turned around and said 'oh, Maggie! Of course!" and so we're talking about Maggie and having this real animated conversation. So, my sister in law says that night the news comes on and goes [he puts on a fake news caster voice], ‘and today, Hillary Clinton was out schmoozing with the delegates,’ and my sister in law goes, 'there you are, rocking back and forth on the couch with Hillary Clinton like the two of you dated in high school.' And my brother goes, 'Oh my God that's Michael!'… My brother thinks we're old friends, whenever he calls, it's 'how's Hillary?'… Of course, I supported Obama, so I don't think she likes me anymore."

Lion King tickets and Clinton schmoozing aside, the bulk of a Shadow Senator's life is spent trying to secure statehood for the District of Columbia. Brown’s campaign slogan was "THE LAST SHADOW SENATOR YOU'LL EVER NEED." Opponents of statehood, he tells me, "say such silly-ass things. Like, 'Washington's too small to be a state!' and I'll say, 'well, we're bigger than Wyoming,' and they'll say, 'no, you're not bigger than Wyoming,' and I go, 'look, it's not a geographical thing, this is why California doesn't have 100 senators and Rhode Island only has one,'"

He pauses.

"Or! They say 'this is the way the Founding Fathers wanted it.' Yeah, the Founding Fathers didn't want women to vote, they didn't want Native Americans to vote, they didn't want African Americans to vote, they didn't want people that didn't own property to vote. They were not a very inclusive lot. So, who gives a damn what the Founding Fathers wanted, you know?" He continues, "I mean, we've enfranchised women, African Americans, Native Americans, people under the age of 21 - the only group that's still out there in the cold is people that live in the District of Columbia."

But, fear not, Shadow Senator Brown has a plan to further the cause of statehood for DC. “We’re looking at clothing and food products." "Food products?" I ask. "Yeah, Freedom Franks - 'take a bite out of injustice.'"

[olivianuzzi]

Shadowy Like A Fox

By Olivia Nuzzi

Published by NSFWCORP September 22, 2013

Kucinich demands transparency over Syria, neglects to mention his relationship with Assad.

Twenty days ago I interviewed former Ohio congressman and current Fox News contributor, Dennis Kucinich, for NSFWCORP. The interview date was moved up at Kucinich's suggestion due to the unfolding situation in Syria. At the time, you will recall, it looked likely that the United States was about to repeat the mistakes it made in 2003 with Iraq, and Kucinich was eager to talk about his frustration with President Obama's handling of the crisis.

During our conversation on August 31, Kucinich did not mention that he had ever met Bashar Al Assad. Nor can I find any reference whatsoever to Kucinich having a relationship with Assad as the events in Syria developed. And yet, earlier this week, Michael Clemente, Fox News' executive vice president of news, said, "On Saturday, September 7th… Dennis Kucinich advised me that he believed he could secure an interview with…Assad, whom he had met on previous occasions." Sure enough, a 2011 piece by the Atlantic quotes a Tweetby CNN reporter Hala Gorani who "Ran into Dennis Kucinich in [Damascus]. Told me he's on fact-finding mission. Met w Assad for 3 hrs yest. Wouldn't elaborate."

In all of Kucinich's appearances on Fox News to discuss Syria prior to this week, he did not once refer to a personal connection to Assad.

During our interviews, Kucinich stayed focused on a few topics: classified briefings (he thought they should stop being held); whether striking Syria without Congressional approval was constitutional (he thought blatantly not); and the concept of humanitarian war ("senseless"). Kucinich also touched on what he saw as another instance of government relying on flawed intelligence:

"…I watched Secretary of State Kerry's presentation yesterday, and the fundamental flaw in the logic of the administration is there isn't any definitive proof that Assad knew about the chemical weapons or caused it [the attacks on Syrian citizens] to happen. Secretary of State Kerry basically charged that, and the intelligence which they're relying on - if anybody looks at the news accounts about it, in terms of the discussion between two Syrian military officials that was overheard or intercepted - the context of it appears to be them denying that either had anything to do with initiating an attack."

On September 6 Kucinich appeared on Fox News' "Studio B with Shepherd Smith" to warn of "shadowy interests behind the scenes who don't care about our country." Given Kucinich once again failed to mention his own connections with Assad, it's worth wondering how he differentiates the words "shadowy" and "interest" from "undisclosed" and "relationship," especially when Kucinich is so strongly advocating a non-aggression policy towards his old pal Assad.

And so to the interview itself. Kucinich, clad in a striped, carnation-pink tie, begins by bringing up the United Nations' chemical weapon report, "my colleague (emphasis mine), Greg Palkot, will be discussing that with you in a moment…" But first: "I wanted to talk to you about major developments in the chemical weapons plan, which has been agreed to by the US and the Russian government… Do you agree with this plan to secure and to eventually destroy the chemical weapons?"

Why thank you for asking, Dennis. "Last week we joined the international agreement of preventing the chemical WMD," Assad replied. "And part of this agreement - the main part - is not to manufacture these armaments; not to store and not to use - of course, not to distribute - and part of it is to get rid of those materials, the chemical materials. So, of course when we are part, now, of this agreement, we have to agree on that chapter."

Asked by Kucinich why he was just agreeing to this now, Assad said that in 2003, Syria approached the UN with a proposal to have "a WMD-free zone in the Middle East," but the United States opposed it.

Kucinich then brought up claims by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry that Assad was "lying" about not having chemical weapons. "That's their words, not mine," Kucinich emphasized. Assad responded that Obama and Kerry's claims were a "blatant lie" because, according to him, he never said he never had chemical weapons.

The interview was, simply put, weird, especially when presented as journalism. In his statement, Fox's Michael Clemente was quick to reassure viewers that "Kucinich was not there in the capacity of a journalist nor was he representing Fox News in that role." Yet, while questioning Assad about Syria's chemical weapons, Kucinich asked, "Would you be ready to let our (again, emphasis mine) Fox News cameras have access to some of the chemical weapons sites so that the American people will be able to see for themselves? Is that possible?" Assad says that is not the president's decision to make.

After ten minutes and thirty seconds, Kucinich turned the interview over to Greg Palkot, who had been sitting awkwardly beside him from the start.

Fox is notorious for making up its own rules, but claiming that Kucinich isn't a Fox News representative, as he tries to negotiate access for Fox news, on television, is impressively disingenuous even by their standards. It is perhaps not quite as disingenuous, though, as Kucinich concealing his "shadowy" relationship with Assad while berating political rivals for not being straight with the American people.

Dennis Kucinich did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Editor's note: The author updated the article shortly after publication to include reference to Hala Gorani's sighting of Kucinich in Damascus in 2011.

[olivianuzzi]

Small People, Impressed By The Hush-Hush

By Olivia Nuzzi

Published by NSFWCORP September 13, 2013

"Let's face it, people are impressed by people like [James] Clapper and [Kenneth] Alexander and [John] Brennan. They're impressed by the seal of classification; they're impressed by the nature of the briefing and the hush-hush and the fact they can't talk... There are a lot of small people in the world who are impressed by things like that." - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

On September 26, 2002, a bipartisan group of fifteen United States House members was summoned for a classified briefing on Iraq. In the West Wing of the White House, inside a room swept for bugging devices, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet hammered home the points made during a recent briefing carried out by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Before entering the room, the House members signed an oath of confidentiality. What they were about to hear was top secret stuff too sensitive to be shared with the masses.

The result of intelligence briefings, we now know, was to convince members of congress to support a war that turned out to be based entirely on false intelligence.

Fast forward to a little over a decade later, and Senior White House officials are spending a lot of their time summoning House members to classified briefings on Syria. This time, the result of the briefings of a reported 370 House members and 93 Senators has been the opposite of what the administration purportedly wants - representatives have chosen to vote against action in Syria.

"Classified briefings don't serve any purpose anymore," Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell tells me. "They're never full, they're never compete, they're never reflective of the real context and the real situation on the ground, and they tend… to capture people because they are classified."

The criticism that classified briefings "capture" the representatives who participate in them is one echoed to me by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), who previously served on the intelligence committee, "a lot of members of congress certainly feel constrained because they want to tell what they understand about a particular issue - they want to tell their constituents. In fact, they feel obliged to tell what they know."

He continues, "It's difficult because the intelligence community instructs members of congress that they can't talk about what they've learned in a classified briefing - they can't divulge classified information even if it is widely known or available to the public. So, [briefings] could be used to prevent members from communicating fully." (emphasis mine)

Holt also questions classified briefings' effectiveness, "For policy purposes, a member of congress can usually get everything that he or she needs from careful reading of the media." He continues, "you sometimes get some information that will help you evaluate the reliability of the claims by the administration officials - but classified briefings aren't worth much… As far as what you need to make a policy decision - who did what, when, and to whom - you can get that, as I say, through careful reading of the press. The importance of classified briefings are [sic] oversold. Part of the reason is the intelligence communities never like to tell what they know, even to members of congress. They're secretive by nature; you often have to pry the information out of them."

Classified briefings, Wilkerson explains "clearly were designed" to manipulate members of congress "with regard to Iraq.... Politicians like Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and even the president of the United States - I think somewhat unwittingly, unlike others - actually used intelligence that they were fed by others in the professional intelligence community to shape a rhetoric that they then used on the American people and the international community to try to influence them to go to Iraq in 2003."

Wilkerson continues, "I don't think the intelligence community starts out [trying] to manipulate. I think they start out with some information and the politicians take that information, and they say 'this is the policy that we want to pursue, what other information do we need to reinforce this policy?' and then, instead of coming back and saying 'that's not the way this should work, Mr. President or Mr. Secretary, we should be giving you the intelligence and you should be using that intelligence to inform your policy. We shouldn't be giving you little tidbits of intelligence that happen to be laying around and cherry-pick to make your policy more powerful.' You wind up with a policy that the decision makers and the people who develop that policy go out and farm the intelligence community to find little tidbits that will fit that policy.'"

The blame for this behavior, Wilkerson argues, belongs more to the politicians than to the intelligence operatives, "I'm not saying intelligence hasn't been bad before and hasn't been given too high a credibility level, but generally speaking, [intelligence failure] happens far less frequently than policy failure - and by policy failure, I mean when the people making the decisions begin to take the intelligence and shape it around those decisions."

And yet, despite reservations on all sides, classified briefings continue to be held, something that Wilkerson chalks up to a desire for some drama. "Let's face it, people are impressed by people like [James] Clapper and [Kenneth] Alexander and [John] Brennan. They're impressed by the seal of classification; they're impressed by the nature of the briefing and the hush-hush and the fact they can't talk." He continued, "there are a lot of small people in the world who are impressed by things like that."

In a September 6th New York Times op-Ed, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) told how he had been given access to a 12-page classified document on Syria in addition to the four-page declassified document. He wrote, "the Syria chemical weapons summaries are based on several hundred underlying elements of intelligence information. The unclassified summary cites intercepted telephone calls, “social media” postings and the like... (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn’t possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)" (emphasis mine)

"I couldn't possibly comment" may sound familiar to viewers of the Netflix series "House of Cards." Kevin Spacey's character uses the phrase occasionally to lead or mislead a young, gullible reporter. But in the British series on which the Netflix series was based, Ian Richardson's character wields the phrase like a gong for the audience. When he says "you may very well think that, I couldn't possible comment," whether the information is true or false, he is letting you know that he is manipulating somebody to his own personal benefit, and somebody is going to lose his influence, his job -- even his, or her, life -- as a result.

Thanks to classified briefings, we now have a congress full of accidental Spaceys and over-enthusiastic Richardsons. You may very well think you know the arguments for, and against, attacking Syria, but none of them canpossibly comment. And that seems to suit many of them just fine.

[olivianuzzi]

Chris Christie's Reelection Party: I'm With The Banned

By Olivia Nuzzi

Published by NSFWCORP November 5th, 2012

7:30 PM. Convention Hall, Asbury Park, New Jersey. Olivia Nuzzi emails live updates from Governor Chris Christie's election night celebration. Updating in real time.

Having been denied a press credential by governor Christie's campaign, I find myself here among the common Christie supporters, clutching my general admission ticket.

A line of hundreds of dressed up New Jersey republicans line the perimeter of the lawn in front of convention hall.

A staffer approaches the line, pointing at women with pocketbooks. "ladies, if your purse is bigger than this, you're not going to be able to get in," she gestures to a small bag the size of an envelope. "They will turn you away at the gate."

Besides purses, coats are also banned, which is something of an inconvenience considering Asbury Park is on the ocean.

...

After an hour wait in the blistering cold, I enter Convention Hall. A female singer belts Journey's "Dont Stop Believing" from the stage. Red light bathes the crowd of mostly white party goers.

...

Partygoers roam around eating giant pretzels and popcorn. Bouquets of balloons decorate red-clothed tables. A large screen projects pictures of Christie and images from inside the event.

...

Another singer takes the stage to sing "Sweet Caroline." He attempts somewhat successfully to engage the audience in a singalong.

...

A campaign commercial plays in the screen. No guests turn to watch it.

...

Todd Christie takes the stage. He thanks the volunteers from the campaign. He thanks the campaign staff. "And then of course we have the candidate... It seems like everyone who didn't know him before now knows him." He i introduces Susannah Martinez, Governor of New Mexico. She says something in Spanish, then goes back to English. "Chris Christie... promised to-" a man comes up and kisses me on the cheek. It is former tea party Frank Pallone challenger Ernesto Cullari. Back to Martinez's speech "...he is a real leader .. When Christie goes on tv and tells those he represents that he'll keep his word, period, Chris Christie keeps his word. You know, governor Christie is an optimist... Tonight Christie showed America what real leadership looks like.... God bless America." She then says thanks in Spanish.

...

The band begins to sing "Love Train." People are drinking more, thus dancing more.

...

A bearded man approaches, "did your puppy dog die?" "What?" He pouts and points to my mouth, "the look on your face!"

...

An older man stands in front of Christie's election cake, which is a replica of Trenton with a tall, svelte man standing in front of it who is supposed to be Christie I guess? It looks more like Christie than Barbara Buono, at least. He positions his Blackberry in front of his face and smiles to snap a few selfies.

...

On the giant projection screen in the room next to the room with the stage, they are airing a CNN interview with Dr. Phil.

...

CNN projects Christie's numbers, 58 to 41, the crowd cheers. Then they project de Blasio's numbers, the crowd boos.

...

The crowd circles the stage and begins to chant when the screen shows Jake Tapper reporting live from the event.

...

Waiting for Christie to take the stage.

"He won fifty five percent of women and 65 percent of something else," a woman in the crowd says.

A short man approaches me. He is holding a large envelope. "What is your name?" "Olivia." "Lidia?" "Sure." He opens his envelope and pulls out photographs, "do you think I can get that close again?" he asks. I don't understand what he is talking about. He explains that he got very close to Christie at an event the previous week and he was trying to get very close to him again. This conversation feels like something I may have to repeat to a police officer at some point. He suddenly changes the subject. "So are you married?" "What?" "Are you here with your husband?" The couple behind me begins to laugh loudly. They offer to buy me a drink, "you need tequila!" The man asks me what I do for a living. Then he asks me if I would be interested in writing about his music career. He again opens his envelope, this time pulling out a CD. Then, as if sent by the Tea Party Gods, former Pallone challenger-Cullari appears to remove me from the situation.

Christie takes the stage, surrounded by his family, to applause usually reserved for the Pope or Justin Bieber. "Well, well, well, how about this, New Jersey?" he asks the adoring crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, tonight, I stand here as your governor, and I am so proud to be your governor."

Despite his landslide victory, I hear some Republicans whisper about the state-wide Republican failure: they failed to pick up any seats. "Not that big a win," I hear a man tell another guest. "A big win for him," someone confirms.

"We stand here tonight showing that it is possible to put your job first, to put working together first, to fight for what you believe in and still get something done for the people he elected you," Christie sings. "The biggest thing I've learned over the last four years is leadership is much less about talking than it is about listening."

Outside, news trucks line the parking lot. A few blocks away, I find myself at a party held by local Democrats. Footage of Christie's speech comes on the TV. "I can't even look," a woman says as she turns away. "I just can't look."

[olivianuzzi]

I am now a full time political correspondent for NSFWCORP

Read my stories at NSFWCORP here

[olivianuzzi]

THE MENENDEZ SEX SCANDAL: A DEMOCRATIC PLOT TO DISCREDIT THE DAILY CALLER?

On the surface, it looks like a perfectly-crafted Right-Wing conspiracy. Six days before the election, in the last hour of a Democratic Senator's campaign for reelection, a potentially devastating report emerges on a widely-respected conservative website known for its journalistic integrity. The Senator has allegedly engaged with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. He reportedly neglected to pay them what they were initially promised for their services. What's more, one of the Senator's top donors has purportedly allowed him to stay at his private villa and utilize his private jet for his trips. In the following days, more details come to light. One of the prostitutes with whom the Senator allegedly had relations was just sixteen years old. 

The combination of cringeworthy details - the Senator preferred "the newest and youngest girls"; the Senator's "prostitution spree" went on as he crusaded against prostitution in Cuba - seemed designed to knock him down as Anthony Weiner and Elliot Spitzer had been knocked down before. He would be just one more in a long line of liberals who sacrificed his power for the sake of his sexual desires. 

Yet, the allegations made by The Daily Caller against Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) this past November were at first met with almost universal indifference. The evidence provided by The Daily Caller was not convincing enough to outweigh the fact that the timing - with the state which Menendez represents struggling to recover in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the presidential election visible on the horizon - was just not right for a sex scandal to stick.

Senator Menendez beat his opponent, New Jersey State Senator Joe Kyrillos, handily and became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee.  

Menendez's victory did not stop The Daily Caller from persisting. Since the initial November 1, 2012 posting, the website followed up no less than 45 times with various updates to the story. Though, the hardest evidence provided remained the footage of two Dominican prostitutes, their faces blurred, identifying Senator Menendez in a photograph as the man they serviced. The website's efforts to discredit and disempower Menendez seemed at best futile and at worst embarrassing. 

And then on Monday night, The Washington Post published a report that one of Senator Menendez's alleged Dominican escorts had confessed to police that she and her colleague were paid by an unnamed attorney to read a prepared script containing the charges that they had provided sexual favors for the Senator in return for payment. The escort, according to The Washington Post, now asserts that she has never even met Bob Menendez. 

After four long months of "did he or didn't he?" and "does anyone even care?" it would appear that Senator Menendez was telling the truth all along. As he told the post "there are obviously some people, some interests using right-wing blogs that have been perpetuating smears about me and I hope that all the truth comes out, because they are nothing but that — smears," continuing, “I’ve always said that these are all false. They’re smears, so I look forward to seeing whatever the Dominican courts have to prove what I’ve said all along.”

But America should not now be asking "who framed Robert Menendez?" It would be too obvious for this to be what it looks like. What America should be asking is "who framed The Daily Caller?" 

Why would The Daily Caller, which is so widely renowned for its consistent reliability, have persisted with such a ridiculous story - besides the fact that because of the bottomless pockets of their bankroller, rejected Batman TV show villain Foster Friess, they could? 

Who sticks to a story that is getting them laughed at, and shushed by their own side, and potentially sued by the subject, when its so profoundly and utterly wrong? Is it like the sportscaster who insisted the coach was changing teams because his source was the coach but the coach had changed his mind and didn't bother to tell him? Was The Daily Caller so bullheaded because they had an unimpeachable source - who might have been lying to them? In short, did somebody set them up? 

This is Obama's America…and The Democratic Machine he owns has clearly been hard at work with a complex plot to discredit The Daily Caller and, in a larger sense, the Right-Wing media. 

That would explain the seemingly inexplicable: why the MSM (mainstream media) refused to circle Menendez and pick at his flailing body like he was slowly-dying roadkill and it was a hawk. 

And of course, only those at the top of The Democratic Food Chain would have the insider-knowledge necessary to make the details of the story so perfect: A US Senator and his dirty campaign money charter a private jet to a villa called Casa de Campo where he gets a 16 year old hooker and between trips, he campaigns against prostitution! It's the type of storyline that Aaron Sorkin would kill (or more realistically, steal) to turn into his next dramedy. 

We cannot allow The Democratic Machine to wipe out its most gullible, credulous and easily-manipulated opponents. To save democracy, we must make it safe for stupidity; we must save The Daily Caller. 

[olivianuzzi]

The Boy Scout Fence

LET'S USE BOY SCOUTS TO SECURE THE US-MEXICAN BORDER

Published in this week's Tri City News

There's been a great deal of talk about the Boy Scouts lately, due to a leak late last month which uncovered plans for the organization to review its "no gays allowed" policy. I'm still not clear as to what the Boy Scouts do exactly. I know it has something to do with "character building" and tree forts and selling Christmas wreaths…but none of that seems particularly useful to me. What are the Boy Scouts doing for America?

On Super Bowl Sunday, President Obama called on the Scouts to lift their ban on gay members. Still, they have decided to delay their final decision until May. Because April showers bring gay flowers or whatever. 

"Not so fast, Obama" have said Right-Wingers. More than 40 conservative organizations ran an ad in USA Today pressuring the Boy Scouts to "stay true to their timeless values and not surrender to financial or political pressures by corporate elites on the issue of homosexuality." 

"That's some pretty heavy stuff," sighed 9 year old Tommy who said he was "really just in it to learn how to build a pinewood derby car."

So what are the Boy Scouts doing for America? Assuming the answer to that is nothing, It must be asked: If the Boy Scouts don't actually do anything, why don't we use them to secure the border? I mean physically use their bodies as a human fence… "The Boy Scout Fence," if you will. 

I know, I know, that's crazy! But is it really? Think about it. 

The Boy Scouts of America love America. The word "America" is right in there in their official name. As of February 8th, the Boy Scouts of America have been loving America for 103 years. According to conservative logic, to love America is to loathe illegal immigrants who march into town looking to steal the jobs nobody else wants to do. So why not really stick it to Obama by not only supporting the Boy Scouts in their doubling down on "timeless values," but by doing what he won't do by securing the border with "The Boy Scout Fence"?

I say we line them up and let them get the job done, armed with their Swiss Army knives and can-do spirit. There are 2.7 million members and over 1 million adult volunteers in the Boy Scouts. And with the US-Mexican border at an estimated 1,933 miles long, that means we could have 1,914 Boy Scouts per mile, with each Boy Scout (or adult volunteer!) protecting his own 2.75 foot space. 

After serving as part of "The Boy Scout Fence," vets can go to college for free or get into theme parks or whatever kids are into. Free Netflix subscriptions for life! A date with Kate Upton! America will be better than ever after taking care of Issue No. 1: illegals, so life will be sweet for the Boy Scouts who scarified their lives to make it happen. 

Many great Americans have been Boy Scouts. Maple syrup enthusiast, Texas Governor Rick Perry; Convicted war criminal Donald Rumsfeld; Painter and convicted war criminal George W. Bush; Kim Kardashian's stepdad Bruce Jenner.

And many not-so-great Americans have been Boy Scouts. The Kenyan President, Barack Obama; George Takei (this must have been a mistake); Celebrity President John F Kennedy; Hairy Lizard King Jim Morrison. 

The fact is, for good (Bush) or evil (Takei), The Boy Scouts of America are as American as America gets.

As if anybody needs further convincing that this is a terrific idea, let me point out that it's much easier to get a feel for how normal The Boy Scout Fence will seem to us once implemented if we consider the headlines likely to emerge about our wholesome border patrol:

"Half of the Boy Scout Fence collapsed today when news of the arrival of Girl Scout cookies sent troops running."

"After 157 years, Congress allows Girl Scouts to serve and secure the border in the historically all-male Boy Scout Fence."

"Rush Limbaugh arrested late Monday evening after hurling his body at The Boy Scout Fence in Arizona."

"Members of a Mexican drug cartel blow off little Timmy's head and run over Bobby and Mikey's bodies while charging through The Boy Scout Fence."

There's nothing sensical about a group dedicated to "character building" being comprised of a bunch of homophobes, but there is something very sensical about employing an already organized army of 2.7 million bored kids (and over 1 million adult volunteers!) to protect the United States of America from scary illegals.