More on ACORN and Breitbart’s hoax from Joe Conason at Salon.com
ACORN hoax victim files lawsuit against O’Keefe and Giles
One of the many victims of Andrew Breitbart’s ACORN video hoax is finally striking back in court, against pseudo-pimp James O’Keefe and pseudo-ho Hannah Giles if not Breitbart himself. Former San Diego ACORN office employee Juan Carlos Vera, who was falsely portrayed in a heavily edited videotape as conspiring with O’Keefe and Giles to traffic underage girls across the Mexican border, is suing both of the right-wing filmmakers, seeking $75,000 in damages under California’s privacy statutes.
Filed last week in the U.S. District Court in San Diego, Vera’s brief complaint claims that O’Keefe, Giles and up to 20 unnamed parties violated his “reasonable expectation of privacy” by conspiring to secretly videotape him and then posting the tapes on the Internet without his consent, causing him to lose his job and other damages. Indeed, as the complaint notes, the “pimp and prostitute” explicitly asked Vera whether their conversation would be confidential.
From Greg Sargent a the Plum Line who says that the House Democrats are finally getting angry at the obstruction of the Republicans and the White House’s lack of support for their campaigns.
The lid has suddenly been ripped off and the seething tensions and anger among Democrats have now been laid bare. As I noted here yesterday, House Dems are furious that they will be the ones who get shellacked in the midterms — largely because of the dithering of the Senate and White House on the economy.
This despite the fact that House Dems have already succeeded in doing the heavy lifting on their side on jobs- and unemployment-related measures and other legislation.
* Now House Dems are going public with this grievance and many others. Rep. Bill Pascrell boils it down:
“What the hell do they think we’ve been doing the last 12 months? We’re the ones who have been taking the tough votes.”
* House Dems also charge that the White House is far more effort into helping embattled Senate candidates than into helping them.
A.B. Stoddard, Op-Ed columnist from The Hill, on Obama’s Trust Issues
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, at least not in this economy. As the Obama agenda tanks in the polls, critics rail against the administration’s suit against Arizona’s new immigration law, the healthcare reform law, new financial-services regulation they claim will further stifle credit and therefore the economy and an ill-advised approach to Middle East policy, among other complaints. Yet as the Obama administration nears the 18-month mark and wades into Bushian unpopularity, it is becoming clear that all roads lead back to the stimulus.
After President Obama gets an earful from irate congressional Democrats, takes the measure of polls showing the public’s disapproval with his performance and begins planning his next campaign for reelection, it may help him to rewind the tape and accept just how much the Recovery and Reinvestment Act brought his presidency to a point from which it is now in need of recovery.
Lanny Davis says The time to get ground troops out of Afghanistan – now
It feels like 1975.
That was the year when left and right came together and we got our kids out of harm’s way in Vietnam … forever.
Back then, we all heard intimidating rhetoric against critics of continuing U.S. involvement in Vietnam – i.e., that it was “dangerous” or even “unpatriotic” to criticize war policy when there were “GIs at risk during wartime”; or, worse, that it was unpatriotic to “cut and run,” which would mean “50,000 had died in vain.”
Those ugly charges didn’t work then, and they won’t work now.
Americans were smart enough then to realize that we could honor every one of those GIs and still not want a single additional life lost in a war that both the left and right had decided was no longer worth fighting, albeit for different reasons. The left saw the war as wrong and immoral. The right saw handcuffs on the military due to political and diplomatic considerations and thus, it said, “If we can’t win, get out.”
Nicholas D. Kristof of the NYT on Seduction, Slavery and Sex
Against all odds, this year’s publishing sensation is a trio of thrillers by a dead Swede relating tangentially to human trafficking and sexual abuse.
“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” series tops the best-seller lists. More than 150 years ago, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” helped lay the groundwork for the end of slavery. Let’s hope that these novels help build pressure on trafficking as a modern echo of slavery.
Human trafficking tends to get ignored because it is an indelicate, sordid topic, with troubled victims who don’t make great poster children for family values. Indeed, many of the victims are rebellious teenage girls – often runaways – who have been in trouble with their parents and the law, and at times they think they love their pimps.
E. J. Dionne jr. says that What the NAACP is really asking on racism within the Tea Party
Good for the NAACP. We need an honest conversation about the role of race and racism in the Tea Party. Thanks to a resolution passed this week at the venerable organization’s national convention, we’ll get it.
The minute you say there are racist elements in the Tea Party — reflected in signs at rallies, billboards and speeches from some of its major figures — the pushback goes from cries of persecution to charges that those who are criticizing divisiveness are themselves the dividers.
So let’s dispense with the obvious: Most of the opposition to President Obama comes from people who are against his policies, not his race. The Tea Party is motivated primarily by right-wing ideology, not by racism.
Gail Collins says no good can ever come of this in her edition of The Bad News Bears.
Today’s additions to the category of No Good Can Ever Come of This:
– “Mel Gibson is on the phone.”
– “The Bachelorette is close to selecting the man of her dreams.”
– “Bristol and Levi are back together.”
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