Still, I’ve been fascinated by Dan Riehl’s coverage of the race and, specifically, the problems swirling around the frontrunner (!?), Reince Priebus. Priebus is GOP Chair in Wisconsin and, along with about three dozen other state chairs, had a pretty good election cycle this November. (Of course, also along with three dozen other state chairs, he had a pretty disastrous cycle in 2008.) Until very recently, he was also on staff at the RNC, serving as General Counsel after steering Michael Steele into the Chairmanship.

On the side, it seems, he also used his legal skills and government and political contacts to secure federal stimulus money for clients. Redstate thinks there is nothing unusual in this, just another lawyer-helping-his-clients situation. Although, as Dan Riehl points out today, his work went quite a bit further than simply advising clients on the stimulus’ impact. And keep in mind, Priebus was the state GOP Chair at this exact time. At the very least, that obvious conflict sets up some pretty funny juxtapositions.

On March 5, 2009, Priebus co-authored a client alert heralding the awarding of $500 million to Wisconsin and noted:

The $529 million in stimulus funds allocated for Wisconsin state and local transportation projects is likely to result in increased opportunities for Wisconsin road, bridge and other transportation contractors, subcontractors and suppliers.

Of course, a little less than a year later he told this to the Stevens Point Journal:

“The stimulus, the jobs bill, all of them — they all create a very small amount of government jobs, but they cost us our future,” Priebus said. “We get very little in return for the massive amount of money that we’re putting toward these government programs.”

I doubt the media would ever do anything with those two quotes. Doubtless, they will also overlook this quote from a pitch also co-authored by Priebus:

If you are interested in learning about other provisions included in The Act, the Michael Best Stimulus and Economic Recovery Team is prepared to assist you in understanding the implications and in developing and implementing a strategy to secure the benefits of this unprecedented legislation. Specifically, we will assist you to identify opportunities, prepare appropriate proposals and make targeted contacts to secure funds.

Well, isn’t that precious.

Within minutes of this story breaking, Priebus or someone at his law firm, began furiously scrubbing all traces of him from the firm’s stimulus work. (Scrubbing…really? Is this 1999? Does Priebus even know about Google cache or WayBack?) He also said the whole thing was a terrible misunderstanding. One of his supporters explained to National Review:

“Some element of the firm must have put out some marketing thing. They’re a general corporation firm. Somehow that erroneously got hooked up to Reince’s personal thing. But he has never been involved in terms of the group that was trying to do that. He hasn’t and won’t. End of story.”

Priebus himself explained it this way:

I’m co chair of the Government Practice Group, so my guess is that I was simply listed

Tight ship they’re running at the Michael Best law firm.

But, nevermind. Let’s take Priebus at his word. Let’s assume he really wasn’t involved in any of this. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt that his name was mistakenly listed as a co-author on at least 4 stimulus client alerts, that his bio mentioned his work in this area and that he was listed as a point of contact for the overall stimulus practice. Fine, it was all a whole series of multiple mistakes. But, if so, what does that mean?

Well, for starters, it means that for well over a year, neither Priebus nor any of his colleagues noticed that he was mistakenly listed on the firm’s website. Clients received alerts listing him as a co-author. Clients thought he was a point of contact. Remember, he wasn’t some junior associate. He was a leading partner in the firm and the freakin chair of the GOP in the state. That would carry quite a bit of weight, enough, even, to convince a client to use the firm’s services. To assert that he was a prominent player in this practice area when he wasn’t is pretty close to misrepresentation. Did any client sign on with the firm thinking that Priebus, a powerful political operative, was working their case?

Again. No. One. Noticed. This? The law firm doesn’t ask partners listed as a co-author of an alert to review it? None of the other partners ever said, “Whoa, you’ve got Priebus listed here…that’s a mistake, I’m the one handling this”? Neither Priebus nor any of the other partners working on the stimulus front ever bothered to look at the firm’s website? (That could explain why Priebus thinks you can “scrub” a website.)

Besides the Apple-Dumpling-Gang humor in all this, there is something more troubling here and it is highly relevant to the RNC race. A while back, Priebus resigned his staff position at the RNC to prepare for this campaign. He has been working at this for at least a couple months. And yet, he didn’t notice this glaring mistake until it came out in the press.

I always advise candidates running for office to first research themselves. Find out what information is out there about them, what is wrong and what could be damaging. Only then do you research your opponents. You always want to minimize surprises in a campaign. Know what you are dealing with.

Priebus not only doesn’t seem to have done a thorough job of this campaign basic, it doesn’t appear that he did it at all. I mean, the man didn’t even look at his own bio before he threw his hat into the ring for national political office? Really? This is the kind of operative who is the “frontrunner” to be chair of the RNC? I know the GOP is often jokingly called the “stupid” party, but in this case, that would be really unfair to stupid people.

Remember, the chief duty of the RNC chair is to “do no harm” to the party or its candidates. One of the more unfortunate aspects of Steele’s tenure is that he too often became the story. His misstatements, gaffes and mistakes often dominated news coverage of the party. Whole news cycles were wasted trying to explain away his actions. Does the RNC really want to go through that all over again?

Priebus has already been featured on MSNBC saying repeatedly that the US should execute Obama, when he meant to say Osama. Now we learn that for well over a year, according to him, his law firm has been publicly crediting him for work he never did. Learning of this mistake, he then tried to cover his tracks by scrubbing the website.

The harm has already been done.

Murkowski’s campaign has informed Salon they see the inclusion of any names, other than perhaps her own, on a list of write-in candidates, as “sad.” Having been denied her party’s nomination, Murkowski now seems to think that any Alaska citizen, other than herself, we assume, who may desire to run for the seat as a write-in candidate is somehow being unfair.

Murkowski campaign spokesman Steve Wackowski tells Salon that “Operation Alaska Chaos” could cause problems for people in Alaska — including native Americans — whose first language is not English.

“I think it shows the desperation of Miller’s supporters. Quite frankly, I think it’s pretty sad,” he said. “For someone who is dyslexic or needs assistance, it’s dissappointing … but we’re not shocked. ”

The Murkowski camp is distributing wristbands, cards, and buttons with the candidate’s name to assist write-in voters.

It’s unclear if any of the other write-in candidates have raised significant funds to furnish voters with wrist bands, cards and buttons, as she has done.  None of the new write-in candidates appear to have violated Alaska’s election laws in any way.

The overall  list of candidates for Alaska’s Senate seat stands at approximately 180 names, though some number of those have been denied, mostly for missing the application deadline. In honor of Big Government Editor Michael Flynn, Big Government has opted to officially endorse Republican Robert A. Flynn as a namesake candidate. While no relation and we know very little about him, his name does appear on the extended list, somewhere.

United States Senator – AK –

The effort came about in response to a stay by the Alaska Supreme Court, which has the potential to set aside existing Alaskan election law to allow for a list of write-in candidates to be provided to voters for the first time in Alaska’s 50-year history as a state. A stay by the Alaskan Supreme Court effectively temporarily reversed a previous ruling by Alaska Superior Court Judge Frank Pfiffner, which had the effect of simply enforcing existing Alaskan election law.

Dealing a setback to the write-in Senate campaign of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska superior-court judge ruled today that election workers can’t provide lists of write-in candidates to voters on Election Day, calling it a “clear violation” of Alaska regulations.

The number by Thursday’s write-in deadline had grown from just a handful earlier this week.

Murkowski mounted her bid after losing the primary to tea-party backed Joe Miller, and some conservatives have urged Alaskans to make their own write-in runs

Those conservatives include Dan Riehl, who issued a call on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website to “highlight the chaos brought about by Lisa Murkowski’s seemingly unending quest for power” with her campaign.

It’s not immediately clear how many of those running did so because of the effort, though the write-in list includes people who’ve openly supported Miller.

On Saturday March 20th the leftist media reported what they described as a horrible story from their sources at the conservative-hating Huffington Post. The media claimed that members of the Congressional Black Caucus were called n*ggers and spat on by tea party protesters as they walked from the Longworth office building to the Rayburn office building. At least one report said that it was “a chorus” of racist hatred. Another report said the Congressional members heard the n-word at least 15 times. Reporters from ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX News, (including Bill O’Reilly), MSNBC, and so on, repeated this horrible story.

Unfortunately, it was a fake. The media had no evidence… Nothing. As the story was a complete fabrication. It was totally made up.

In fact, several videos were later released that proved that there was no “chorus” of racist hatred and no one screamed the n-word. It was all a lie.

Several people, including Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. filmed the entire episode and could not find any evidence of racist hate. Let’s get his video, before the DNC alters it!

He found nothing.

Last Wednesday, video was released that confirmed the spitting incident was bogus, too.
Dan Riehl reported:

There’s some higher resolution video below I hadn’t seen before. Unlike what was claimed during recent Tea Party protests in Washington, DC, it would appear Cleaver was simply walking close by in front of a protester. The protester’s hands were cupped as he was shouting. While it appears Cleaver may have experienced a spraying of sorts as a result of the yelling, it does not support a conclusion that he was intentionally spat upon, as claimed.

Here’s the video:

Again. Another liberal lie.

On Thursday of last week Andrew Breitbart at Big Government offered $10,000 to any of the reported victims for proof of a racial attack. No one will! And, in this economy you know someone would if they could. No one came forward. Nothing happened. It was all a lie.

It’s time for these race hustlers to apologize to the tea party movement and the American people for this horrible racist lie.

We demand that these Black Caucus members apologize for their fabricated hate story.

This post was co-authored by Jim Hoft and Kevin Jackson, blogger at The Black Sphere and author of The Big Black Lie.

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, December 23, 1776

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

– Esther 4:14

These are interesting times. Under President Obama and the most liberal Congress since 1965, the United States government is expected to borrow a trillion dollars per year for the next decade while the size and power of our federal government will grow at the expense of our liberties. 

In this environment, Democrats in Congress are working on a bill to give President Obama emergency control of the Internet (S.773) which would permit the President to seize control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.  Meanwhile, the President has appointed Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  Prof. Sunstein support controls on free speech on the Internet.  He views the Web as a Wild Wild West that needs taming and wants new laws to corral wayward bloggers. His book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (not to be confused with Noodge) urges employing the force of government to make us all better persons (“New Soviet Man” anyone?).  In his latest work, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, the Harvard professor, now top Information apparatchik, worries about “…institutions (being) harmed by the rapid spread of damaging falsehoods via the Internet.” 

Of course, one man’s “falsehoods” might be another man’s facts.  Czar Sunstein’s extreme concern likely grows out of his acute understanding that our postmodern President simply speaks reality into existence; words are reality in the Obama White House.

Into this breach come the bloggers.  There are about 120 million blogs today.  Many of them are political, most are not.  

America’s political bloggers trace their heritage, their place in the body politic, to the Colonial era.  Most of today’s political bloggers would have been quite comfortable defying the British Stamp Act of 1765, were they around 244 years ago.  The Stamp Act was designed to impose government content control on the then 23 newspapers which served about two million Colonialists.  Not one Colonial newspaper bought the properly stamped paper.  In fact, the political content of the papers increased, to the alarm of the British authorities. On the eve of the Revolution, there were 31 papers in the Colonies, by the time of the Constitution’s ratification, there were 92, and by 1835, there were 1,200 newspapers serving 15 million Americans. 

Political bloggers became a force to be reckoned with in 2002 with Sen. Trent Lott’s comments on Sen. Strom Thurmond and again in 2004, when Little Green Footballs took down Dan Rather and Mary Mapes (ironically, Mapes writes for the Huffington Post now) over CBS’ airing of forged Air National Guard documents purporting to show that President George W. Bush avoided service in Vietnam.

With many blogs attracting more readers than daily newspapers while newspaper circulation plummets and experienced journalists are being laid off, we can see why Professor Czar Sunstein is worried – no longer do like-minded liberals in the major media have a lock on what passes for truth in the news. (This brings to mind the cynical critique of the former Soviet Union’s main papers, Tass (News) and Pravda (Truth) “Ni pravda Tass. Ni tass Pravda.” “There is no truth in Tass and there is no news in Pravda.”)

There’s a certain urgency in today’s blogosphere – an understanding that we are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history.  Conservative bloggers, mostly unpaid – concerned moms, talented lawyers, activist students – are acting as a potent counterforce against the attempted rapid remaking of America under Pres. Obama’s direction.  As such, today’s bloggers are the most visible manifestation of the Conservative Movement.  And this, as the Republican Party largely tracks aimlessly in opposition to President Obama, but without any apparent objective, other than to regain power for power’s sake in numb repetition of the errors of 2006 and 2008.

Were Thomas Paine and Alexander Hamilton (Publius) around today, they would surely be blogging right alongside the likes of the paid and unpaid authors of NRO’s The Corner, Michelle Malkin, RedState, Hot Air, Big Government, Big Hollywood, Flopping Aces, Infidels are Cool, Riehl World View, Red County, Ace of Spades HQ, Flashreport, Right Wing News, and many others.

Let the blogs bloom, for they have come for such a time as this.