A GOP rising star demands tolerance

If Romney isn't perceived as being phony enough, his campaign's leader in Arizona is forced to come out.

“All of the allegations are false except one, I am gay,” Babeu said.

The nationally renown Pinal County Sheriff called a news conference to address the explosive story by The Phoenix New Times that he pressured a man only identified as “Jose” into signing an agreement to conceal their relationship or face deportation. The piece, posted late Friday, also includes text messages Babeu exchanged with the man and pictures he posted on online gay websites.

Babeu repeatedly sidestepped questions about his personal life but acknowledged a relationship with the man in question.

“What I do in my personal life and private life is my business,” he said.

Couldn't agree more, what he does in his personal life is his business...but I don't think he'll be welcome at too many Republican events any time soon.

At another stop in Ohio on Saturday, Mr. Santorum waded into what he called the “phony theology” of Mr. Obama’s agenda. 

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.”

In later comments to reporters, Mr. Santorum said while there are “a lot of different stripes” of Christianity, he believes that “if the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.”

“I’m just saying he’s imposing his values on the church, and I think that’s wrong,” he said, adding that he did not believe Mr. Obama was less of a Christian for doing so. 

Some probes are more exciting than others

Steve Benen asks an excellent question: Why is a House ethics committee's investigation of Rep. Charles Rangel seemingly more interesting to the press than the FBI's investigation of Sen. John Ensign?

There may be some rule that I'm not aware of, prohibiting coverage of Republican scandals, but while a House Democrat's ethics problems intensify, a sitting Republican senator is still the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, which is also getting more serious.

The Senate on Thursday night quietly approved a resolution that will allow Sen. John Ensign's aides to testify to a federal grand jury investigating the aftermath of the Nevada Republican's extramarital affair with a former campaign aide.

By voice vote, the Senate approved the resolution that would authorize employees of the Senate to give testimony to a grand jury in Washington.

Senate aides said that the resolution was necessary because Senate rules would prohibit employees from testifying outside of the halls of Congress.

Politico added that the move, which nearly every major outlet ignored, "is the latest sign that the investigation ... continues to move swiftly."

This development comes just a week after Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a former Ensign housemate, announced that he'd agreed to cooperate with the federal criminal investigation surrounding the conservative Nevadan. Coburn turned over more than 1,200 pages of documents to the Justice Department, including emails from Ensign.

And that development came on the heels of news that Ensign's aides have told investigators that the senator knew he was violating ethics rules on lobbying restrictions, but did it anyway

To recap: John Ensign, defense of marriage scold, had an affair with the wife of his friend and staffer. He then had his parents offer to pay the couple to keep the story quiet and used his office to try to get a lobbyist job for the husband, violating ethics rules.

Charlie Rangel, Korean War hero, had a Harlem apartment he didn't live in that he may have used as a campaign office and didn't disclose a vacation home, among a handful of other "serious" ethics violations.

The Hatch Act?

I assume Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a useful tool for Republicans as she floats the latest trial balloon attack on Shirley Sharrod's character. But, really, the Hatch Act?

Before this is over, Shirley Sharrod is going to have her own daytime talk show.

More good news for Republicans -- the Civil Rights disaster

On the Sunday Idiot Shows, Newt Gingrich helpfully pointed out that passage of comprehensive health care reform is the worst political disaster for Democrats since passage of Civil Rights legislation under LBJ.

Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill “the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times,” Gingrich said: “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Quickly called on that -- that overcoming decades of apartheid and doing the morally correct thing was probably worth the price (that LBJ himself recognized), Gingrich quickly backs away.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was quoted Sunday as saying that President Obama and the Democrats, by passing comprehensive health care legislation, "will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the passage of civil rights legislation.

The article went on to note how Johnson's support for civil rights legislation broke apart the North-South coalition in the old Democratic Party and led to the realignment of the South into solid Republican territory.

Gingrich responded with several emails saying that the context misrepresented his views by implying that he believed Johnson was wrong to sign the major civil rights legislation of the 1960s. To the contrary, he said, the civil rights revolution of 1956-1965 was "morally absolutely necessary" for the country and Johnson was correct in pushing for the legislation. Other Johnson actions, he said, inflicted more damage to the Democratic coalition.

Not only is this guy unfit to be president, he's unfit to teach history. He was absolutely correct, in the first case, to note that Civil Rights legislation did in fact rupture the Democratic Party. Yes, the war would prove LBJ's undoing, but it was Civil Rights that broke the South from the Democratic Party. And good riddance, even if it did result in Nixon, Wallace, and Reagan (and, alas, Gingrich).

That southern arm of the Party no longer exists in any real sense. The correlation couldn't be farther from the truth. What is true is that, yes, many Democrats are going to face tough odds in November, but tackling one of the most intractable problems of our times and doing something that is morally upstanding seems worth what will be a tough price to pay for individual politicians and a brief one for the Party, but will stand as nearly as great an achievement as was Civil Rights was nearly 50 years ago.