Say Anything Blog

The accounting scandal now haunting the National Republican Congressional Committee was preceded by a series of decisions over the past decade to relax internal financial controls at the committee, according to numerous Republican sources familiar with the NRCC’s operations during those years.

…These changes gave committee staffers more freedom to spend money quickly and react to a shifting political landscape during heated campaign battles, and House Republicans were able to claim larger majorities after the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections.

… the actions also may have contributed to a perceived lack of oversight within the NRCC, especially over financial records, a failure that outside observers blame for an accounting scandal that could go much deeper than the allegedly forged audit a former treasurer sent to the committee’s principal lender in January. NRCC officials contacted the FBI soon after discovering that the former employee, Christopher J. Ward, had submitted what they believe to be a fake internal audit to Wachovia as part of a loan application by the committee.

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - The United States expects to have 140,000 troops in Iraq in July after withdrawing five combat brigades, leaving a force larger than before it began pouring in troops last year, the Pentagon said on Monday.

“These force posture levels are truly conditions based and driven by the mission requirements and the assessments of commanders on the ground,” Ham said at a Pentagon briefing.

...There were some 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq before President George W. Bush ordered a surge of about 30,000 more to curb rampant violence that threatened to plunge the country into all-out civil war.

After 6 ½ years of occupation we need more troops than before the surge because we are winning. Just look at the force posture levels that are truly conditions based and driven by the mission requirements and the assessments of commanders on the ground.

Fallon: Afghanistan is bad, but Iraq is worse.On CTV’s Question Period yesterday, Centcom chief Adm. William Fallon claimed that “we’re not nearly as bad as some would have you believe in Afghanistan.” Though he acknowledged that there has been a “huge upsurge in horrible things that go on in Afghanistan,” Fallon said he’s not phased by the increase because it pales in comparison to Iraq:

I look at Iraq and what I’ve been dealing with over there, and there’s no comparison in the magnitude of the number of events and so forth.

Watch it:

LIMA (Feb. 25) - A ceremonial plaza built 5,500 years ago has been discovered in Peru, and archeologists involved in the dig said on Monday carbon dating shows it is one of the oldest structures ever found in the Americas.

There's also more footage of Couric in the video below, fidgeting with her scarf, as well as Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews behind the scenes">Today, video of Ann Coulter chewing her Nicorette, but turning down a second piece unless “you can chop it up so I can snort it. That would help.”

There’s also more footage of Couric in the video below, fidgeting with her scarf, as well as Bill O’Reilly and Chris Matthews behind the scenes.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Stone’s exploits, here’s a brief overview:

In 1996, he was forced to resign from his volunteer role on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996 after tabloids tracked down sexy ads he and his wife, Nydia, allegedly placed on a swingers’ website. In 2000, during the Bush v. Gore recount, Stone was chosen by Bush family consigliere, former Sec. of State James Baker, to lead the fake “Brooks Brothers mob” riots in Miami. In 2004, Stone secretly helped Democrat Al Sharpton launch his insurgent presidential bid.

WASHINGTON — Ronald Reagan had his “Reagan Democrats.” And now, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has turned the tables on the Republican Party with his “Obamacans,” disaffected Republicans who are flocking to the Democratic presidential candidate the way disenchanted Democrats backed Reagan, though in smaller numbers.

And in the March 4 Texas Democratic presidential primary, which is open to Republicans, Obamacans could be out in force. An Obamacan Web site, http://www.republicansforobama.org, already has a petition drive under way to line up Republicans for Obama in Texas.

Former Marine Jack Holt, a technology businessman from Austin who has supported President Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain in the past with his votes and money, is so taken with Obama that he’s close to taking the final step, from lifelong Republican to Democrat.

“You could say I’m just about there,” Holt, 44, said Friday as he organized a weekend three-mile run/walk fundraising event in Austin for Obama.

“For me, the Republican Party has become so ugly and so arrogant, I don’t want to have any part of it,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Rick Renzi was indicted Friday on charges of extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and other matters in an Arizona land swap scam that allegedly helped him collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs.
A 26-page federal indictment unsealed in Arizona accuses Renzi and two former business partners of conspiring to promote the sale of land that buyers could swap for property owned by the federal government. The sale netted one of Renzi’s former partners $4.5 million.

Renzi is a three-term member of the House. He announced in August that he would not seek re-election.

GOP check wasn’t in the mail

Money woes - The Oregon party is a quarter-million in debt and under an IRS lien after not paying payroll taxes

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
HARRY ESTEVE

The Oregonian

The Oregon Republican Party has hit the financial skids, facing more than a quarter-million dollars in debt and an IRS lien for failing to pay payroll taxes.

“It’s far more debt than we’ve been in for years,” party spokeswoman Brianne Hyder said Tuesday. “It’s a tough year for Republicans to raise money in Oregon.”

The bad financial news comes as the party is struggling to recruit candidates for open statewide posts. It also comes during a presidential election year when state parties are called upon to help deliver votes in November.

Party Chairman Vance Day was unavailable for comment Tuesday, leaving Hyder to field questions about the organization’s deteriorated fiscal condition.

“It’s certainly not a positive thing,” Hyder said of the lien and the debt. “It’s something we take very seriously.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military has been stretched dangerously thin by the Iraq war, according to almost 90 percent of retired and current military officers polled on the state of America’s armed forces.
Eighty percent said it would be unreasonable to expect the U.S. military to wage another major war successfully at this time, according to the poll by the Center for a New American Security think tank and Foreign Policy magazine.

More than 3,400 serving and retired officers took part in the poll, organizers said. Around 90 percent were retired officers, a large majority had combat experience and about 10 percent had served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON—The CIA set up a network of front companies in Europe and elsewhere after the Sept. 11 attacks as part of a constellation of “black stations” for a new generation of spies, according to current and former agency officials.

But after spending hundreds of millions of dollars setting up as many as 12 of the companies, the agency shut down all but two after concluding they were ill-conceived and poorly positioned for gathering intelligence on the CIA’s principal targets: terrorist groups and unconventional weapons proliferation networks

...“I don’t believe the intelligence community has made the fundamental shift in how it operates to adapt to the different targets that are out there,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

The cover arrangements most commonly employed by the CIA “don’t get you near radical Islam,” Hoekstra said, adding that six years after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, “We don’t have nearly the kind of penetrations I would have expected against hard targets.”
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WASHINGTON — Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press, accuses the service of “gross mismanagement” that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.

Cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for the so-called MRAPs, according to the study. Stateside authorities saw the hulking vehicles, which can cost as much as a $1 million each, as a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter vehicles that were years from being fielded.

...Among the findings in the Jan. 22 study:

_ Budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage being done by IEDs in late 2004 and early 2005 and were convinced the best solution was adding more armor to the less-sturdy Humvees the Marines were using. Humvees, even those with extra layers of steel, proved incapable of blunting the increasingly powerful explosives planted by insurgents.

_ An urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of the vehicles. The Marines could not continue to take “serious and grave casualties” caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.

Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik’s request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marine Corps’ supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study contends.

_ The Marine Corps’ acquisition staff didn’t give top leaders correct information. Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, was not told of the gravity of Hejlik’s MRAP request and the real reasons it was shelved, Gayl writes. That resulted in Conway giving “inaccurate and incomplete” information to Congress about why buying MRAPs was not hotly pursued.

_ The Combat Development Command, which decides what gear to buy, treated the MRAP as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans for equipment that was more mobile and fit into the Marines Corps’ vision as a rapid reaction force. Those projects included a Humvee replacement called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a new vehicle for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.
A former Marine officer, Gayl spent nearly six months in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 as an adviser to leaders of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

His stinging indictment of the Marine Corps’ system for fielding gear is not a first. He has been an outspoken advocate for non-lethal weapons, such as a beam gun that stings but doesn’t kill and “dazzlers” that use a powerful light beam to steer unwelcome vehicles and people from checkpoints and convoys.

The failure to send these alternative weapons to Iraq has led to U.S. casualties and the deaths of Iraqi civilians, Gayl has said.

Gayl filed for whistle-blower protection in May with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. He said he was threatened with disciplinary action after meeting with congressional staff on Capitol Hill

MANCHESTER - A Boston-based federal judge was found guilty yesterday of driving drunk on Elm Street last week after striking a plea deal with the city that enabled him to avoid trial. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Somma, 63, pleaded no contest in Manchester District Court to a misdemeanor first-offense driving while intoxicated charge. Under the plea deal, Somma agreed to a 12-month license suspension, which could be reduced to six months if he successfully completes an alcohol awareness program, according to court records. He also paid $600 in fines and penalties.

...Somma told police he had been at the Breezeway Pub where he had one gin and tonic about two hours earlier, the police report reveals. He later said he drank two gin and tonics.

The Breezeway Pub, at 14 Pearl St., bills itself as “New Hampshire’s favorite gay and alternative bar,” according to its web site.

...“I won’t comment on the attire, either,” said Gregory T. Muller, an attorney with the city solicitor’s office.

Reports have the judge, appointed by W in 2004, in women’s attire and fumbling though his purse for his license.

What a party.

Longtime Maryland Del. Robert A. McKee (R-Washington) resigned today after authorities searched his Hagerstown home and seized his personal computer and images from the Internet.

McKee, 58, has served in the House of Delegates since 1995. For 29 years, he has served with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Washington County, a children’s mentorship program, most recently as the group’s executive director. He announced he also would resign from that post.

“For me, this is deeply embarrassing,” McKee said in a statement released today. “It reflects poorly on my service to the community.”

...FBI spokesman Richard Wolf said the bureau’s cyber crimes unit is assisting local authorities with the investigation. He declined to comment further on the case, saying, “I can’t get into any details of what we’re doing.”

The cyber crimes unit includes investigations of child pornography.

Previously Announced Romney For President Maryland Steering Committee Members:

- Greg Fox – Councilman, Howard County
- Robert Duckworth – County Clerk, Anne Arundel County
- Delegate Robert McKee – Washington County - Delegate Tanya Shewell – Carroll County
- Delegate Donna Stifler – Harford County

In recent days another large but obscure corner of the financial world has come under acute stress. Alarmed by the running turmoil in the debt markets, investors have refused to buy certain securities that not long ago many regarded as equivalent to cash.

Even though the securities are long term, banks hold auctions periodically to set the interest rates. During the last three days, almost 1,000 of these auctions failed because there were not enough buyers. The banks that marketed the instruments, known as auction-rate securities, also declined to buy.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey now finds itself paying a rate of 20 percent on $100 million of its debt, almost quadruple its costs a week ago. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now paying 15 percent on auction securities. It is unclear how long such high rates will persist, or when the market for these instruments will revive, if at all.