Tag Archives: Steve Scalise

national news, political news

Is all hell breaking loose in D.C.?

WASHINGTON — I had intended to post this blog as a comment about the political divisions that roil inside the building pictured here.

Those divisions seem to belie the calm and serenity we saw while strolling along Capitol Hill. We came up on the Capitol Building at sunset and just, oh, took it all in.

Then came the news this morning that five people were injured in a shooting at a park in Alexandria, Va. One of the victims is U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the Republican Party’s congressional whip, the No. 3-ranked member of the House of Representatives.

We have heard as well that Scalise’s injury is not life-threatening, which is good to hear.

In some manner or form, the picture here juxtaposed with the events this morning perhaps give even more credence to the notion that all hell appears to be breaking loose near the halls of power.

My goodness! This has to stop!

The shooting took place reportedly where Republican members of Congress were practicing for the annual baseball game that occurs between GOP members and their Democratic colleagues. It’s a good-time charity event. It is viewed as a bipartisan event that enables lawmakers to have some pure fun away from the rough and tumble of the political battles.

Now this event has been sullied by senseless violence.

I’m going to pray for the victims of this act. I believe I’ll also say a prayer or two for our great nation.

national news, political news

Scalise needed to be in Selma

If there was one member of the congressional leadership team who needed to be in Selma to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, it was Louisiana U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise.

He should have been there. He should have sought to make amends for a significant error in judgment some years ago, before he became a Republican member of the House of Representatives.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/steve-scalise-skip-selma-march-conference-116232.html?hp=lc3_4

Scalise had the bad taste in 2006, prior to his election to Congress, to accept a speaking engagement before a group founded by noted Ku Klux Klan grand lizard David Duke.

Scalise, who’s now the House majority whip, has since expressed regret over attending the Duke-sponsored event.

Where was he the day of the Selma commemoration? He was in Sea Island, Ga., attending an American Enterprise Institute conference, along with some other key conservative thinkers and politicians.

One of them attending the AEI event was House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who also took time to attend the rally on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

McCarthy was one of a handful of key Republican politicians to attend the Selma event; another key Republican in Selma was the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, who was there with his wife, Laura.

Scalise, who still has some damage to repair from the fallout from his David Duke speech all those years ago, missed a chance to demonstrate that he really doesn’t subscribe to the views held by the KKK.

 

national news

Speaker gets past this rocky road

House Speaker John Boehner has had more fun than what he experienced the past couple of weeks.

It’s been like, well, herding cats. His Republican caucus all but went into apoplexy over a plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The TEA party wing of the caucus remained dead set against it. Other Republicans joined with Democrats to fund DHS until September.

Without the money, DHS would have had to shut down; 30,000 federal employees would have been furloughed.

Crisis is averted. For now.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/234467-house-approves-dhs-funding

The speaker’s difficulty with his the TEA party cabal is far from over. I’ll just suggest that his fear will be that they’ll be so angry with him they might try to launch an intraparty insurrection to get Boehner removed from his post.

Who would get the gavel? Louie Gohmert, the East Texas chucklehead? Would it be Steve Scalise, the majority whip from Louisiana who once spoke to a David Duke-sponsored outfit?

My hunch is that Boehner will survive any possible rebellion.

But the vote to fund DHS now allows the House of Representatives to get on with more serious matters. Lawmakers ought to focus on things such as, oh, a budget, infrastructure legislation, some national security issues. You know, the stuff to which they all signed on to do on behalf of all Americans.

I’m glad the deal was struck. Boehner actually worked with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the despised former speaker. That, by itself, might be cause for the TEA party wing of the GOP to break out the pitchforks and torches.

Isn’t governing fun, Mr. Speaker?

national news, political news

David Duke's name is pure poison

Steve Scalise must not have gotten out much before he was elected to Congress in 2008.

There can be no explanation for his not understanding that any organization associated with someone named David Duke would be pure poison, toxic and a group to avoid at all costs.

He didn’t hear the news about Duke, apparently. He must not have known that Duke is a (former) Ku Klux Klansman, a hater of blacks and Jews and someone whose ideas about anything under the sun are anathema to the principles of inclusion.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/steve-scalise-white-supremacy-group-reaction-113872.html?hp=b1_l2

Scalese spoke to a EURO Organization ostensibly about taxes when he served in the Louisiana state legislature in 2002. He now says he “regrets” speaking to the group. He says is now that the country has learned of the House majority whip’s speaking to the group.

Did he disavow the white supremacist group’s world view the moment he learned of David Duke’s association with it? Gosh, I haven’t heard that he has done that. Has anyone else heard such a thing?

Scalise is now in damage-control mode, trying to fend off the critics who condemn his speech.

The single question I have is this: Did he know that David Duke was the group’s founder when he agreed to speak to its membership?

 

national news, Uncategorized

Racial issue gets in GOP's way once more

That darn issue of race relations has just bitten the Republican congressional leadership right in the backside.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

GOP closes ranks around Scalise

GOP House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002. The group was founded by a fellow Louisianan, one-time Ku Klux Klan grand dragon/wizard/potentate/medicine man David Duke.

Scalise says now he “regrets” his “error in judgment.” He condemns the views of “groups like that.”

Hey, it was a dozen years ago. No harm done now, right? He spoke six years before entering Congress.

Should he quit his leadership post? Should the congressman quit his House seat? I’m not going there until we know more about what he said and the nature of the invitation.

It does kind of remind me of what happened when former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., had the poor judgment to say something kind about the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign. That was when ol’ Strom broke away from the Democratic Party — of which he was a member back then — to run for the White House as a Dixiecrat. He was a segregationist back then — and proud of it, too! He just didn’t like mixing with black people — even though, as we would learn later, he mixed it big time with an African-American woman, with whom he produced a daughter.

Lott said this about Strom: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Oh, brother. That got Lott into some serious trouble. Lott stepped down as majority leader.

Two questions: Did the invitation to Scalise come from a group — the EURO Conference — identified easily as a white supremacist organization? And did he know of Klansman David Duke’s association with it?

The deal-breaker well might be the Duke involvement. Let’s come clean, shall we?