Alabama Tea Party Activist Suspects Corruption in $50 Million Contract

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Martha Roby is the GOP establishment’s pick for the nomination in Alabama’s 2nd District congressional race against “Blue Dog” Democrat Rep. Bobby Bright. She fell short of a majority in the June 1 primary and got pushed into July 13 runoff by Tea Party-backed candidate Rick Barber. And it looks like Roby’s friends in Montgomery city government are trying to run out the clock on what could be a serious scandal: Did Roby, as a city council member, vote on a $50 million contract that awarded business to her husband’s law firm?

Tea Party activist Richard England thinks so:

Montgomery City Council Resolution 28-2009 was a $50 million dollar bond awarded to a Montgomery law firm. The bill passed unanimously, meaning that City Councilwoman and Congressional candidate Martha Roby voted for it.
On June 11th, I filed a freedom of information act request at Montgomery City Hall to find out the dealings between City Council and Balch & Bingham, the Montgomery law firm where Riley Roby is a partner. Riley Roby is Martha Roby’s husband.
Normally, they fill FOIA requests with 48 hours. It’s been three weeks, and they refuse to tell me which law firm was awarded the $50 million contract through City Council Resolution28-2009; this, despite the fact that they responded to my original request of every bond issue and recipient law firm going back to the 1990s.
Montgomery Records Manager Tom Register has confirmed that the vote was unanimous and that the bond was for $50 million, but he says he can’t tell me which firm the contract was awarded to.
I believe that Balch & Bingham was awarded the contract. I believe that City Hall is trying to protect Martha Roby because her vote to award her husband’s firm the contract is tantamount to corruption. . . .
Please contact City of Montgomery Records Manager Tom Register at 334 241 2098. Contact Richard England at 334 531 6306 or 334 356 3106.

Yeah, it would also be good to get the Roby campaign to respond to this accusation.

UPDATE: Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs links and produces documents showing that Roby did not recuse herself on this vote.

Fitting Military Jeremiad Refreshingly Accurate

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by Smitty

Captain Hegseth, via Daley Gator, cuts through the fog of Postmodernism besetting Americans supporting reform:

The good Captain concisely and more clearly states what I tried to communicate in various posts: start with the Constitution and move to the nominee. Do not merely assert, through some Congressional deference, that anyone this particular POTUS wants to put in a job is automagically capable.
The Harvard recruiter issue alone identifies her as not fit, and that is before the partial birth abortion fiasco.
Elena Kagan, while no doubt personable, is to the SCOTUS what BHO is to the Presidency. We need less, not more, of this weirdness.
Here is an idea: let both Stevens and Ginsberg retire, and we’ll just wait until there is renewed confidence in the POTUS to consider going back up to 9 justices. Continue reading Fitting Military Jeremiad Refreshingly Accurate →

A. +/- Umpteen Eleventy

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Q. What was the statistical margin of error on DailyKos polls for the past two years?

Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos has sued his polling company, Research 2000 (R2K, for short), alleging that the firm supplied “fraudulent” data. Daily Kos has produced a report that seems to indicate R2K was just making up numbers. I say “seems to indicate,” because:

  • I’m a journalist, not a statistician; and
  • This is a pending lawsuit, so we don’t want to convict someone prematurely.

With that in mind, however . . . .

BWAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHA! ROTFLMAO!

DKos (allegedly) got hosed by this polling company, which was (apparently) selling him live phone polls — i.e., not automated “robo-calls” — at suspiciously low prices. And it seems that neither Markos nor his genius readers suspected anything was amiss until statistics wizard Nate Silver analyzed recent polls and discovered that R2K ranked dead last in accuracy among major polling firms.

Republican consultant Patrick Ruffini roughed in some numbers and found something else fishy:

R2K did polling for state-level liberal blogs like Blue Mass Group in the run up to the Massachusetts special election. On January 14, R2K produced a poll showing Coakley with an 8-point lead (while other polls were showing Brown pulling ahead), and in touting the “good” news, Blue Mass Group proudly noted that “Research 2000 does live interviews, unlike robo-pollsters Rasmussen and PPP.”  . . .
Did a Massachusetts progressive blog pay more than $6,000 for a top-of-the-line survey when maybe a half dozen other pollsters were polling the race by that point? Really? This begs the question of what Blue Mass Group really paid. And what did Kos really pay?

Exactly. If it seems to good to be true, it usually is and yet it seems R2K was able to find willing clients for its dubious services among liberal bloggers.

Yeah.

Which calls to mind the fact that major “progressive” organizations were among the victims hardest hit when Bernie Madoff’s pyramid scheme finally collapsed.

The moral of the story is, if you’re running a rip-off operation, seek clients who believe in Keynesian economics, anthropogenic global warming, peace through disarmament, Hope and Change and unicorns.  We leave you with this cogent economic analysis from a leading progressive intellectual, Peggy Joseph:

Democrats: Because Stupid People Have Rights, Too!

Declaration Entertainment: Putting A Scowl On A Commie Near You

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by Smitty

Apt Hollywood metaphor?
If you had to think of an image that summarizes Hollywood, yet is still mostly safe for work, I should think that ‘The Worst Toilet In Scotland’ might suffice.
We’ve bemoaned the situation for years, and now it looks like someone is Actually Doing Something. Someone is Bill Whittle, mister Eject! Eject! Eject! and Afterburner.
They haven’t touted it yet, but there was a passing mention of Declaration Entertainment on Trifecta (itself great). Search engine slave that I am, I typed in the name and look what came up:

If you can afford to sign up, the $120/year intro rate is a cheap investment to help rescue American culture.

‘Now Imagine If Hunter S. Thompson Was On Twitter . . .’

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@rsmccain — Robert Stacy McCain has aptly been described as “the conservative Hunter S. Thompson.” Now imagine if Hunter Thompson was on Twitter!
— Matt Lewis, “The Top 25 Conservatives on Twitter”

About time I got this kind of recognition, considering that we’re now just three weeks away from the 2010 Right Online Conference in Las Vegas.

I took a fast right on Russell, then a left onto Maryland Parkway . . . and suddenly I was cruising in warm anonymity past the campus of the University of Las Vegas . . .  no tension on these faces; I stopped at a red light and got lost, for a moment, in a sunburts of flesh in the cross-walk: fine sinewy thighs, pink mini-skirts, ripe young nipples, sleeveless blouses, long sweeps of blond hair, pink lips and blue eyes — all the hallmarks of a dangerously innocent culture.
I was tempted to pull over and start mumbling obscene entreaties: “Hey, Sweetie, let’s you and me get weird. Jump into this hotdog Caddy and we’ll flash over to my suite at the Flamingo, load up on ether and behave like wild animals in my private, kidney-shaped pool . . . .”
Sure we will, I thought. But by this time I was far down the parkway, easing into the turn lane for a left at Flamingo Road. . . .
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The list of speakers for this year’s conference includes Erick Erickson and Ed Morrissey — both of whom are far more interesting than me, which is why they’re on the list and that bastard Erik Telford didn’t invite me, just like he snubbed me last year.

Obviously, Telford fails to take me seriously. After I spared him the long-promised ass-whupping at the Pittsburgh conference, he mistook mercy for weakness. 

Telford probably thought I’d forget his promise to put me on the agenda for this year’s Right Online conference at the posh Venetian Resort Hotel (where they’re offering rooms at the discount rate of  $169 a night.)

“It’s Vegas,” Telford thought to himself. “Surely that redneck loser can’t make it all the way to Vegas.”

Telford obviously didn’t believe that, for the second year in a row, I’d be able to rattle the tip-jar and scare up enough cash for this trip.

Three weeks. Twenty-one days.

If we could average $100 a day until then . . . But that would be crazy.

Wouldn’t it?

RIGHT ONLINE
LAS VEGAS, JULY 23-25

John Boehner Unaware Of The Narrative That He Is A Mel Gibson Trainee

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by Smitty

Here is House Minority Leader John Boehner trying to sound firm and challenging with the President:
If John read the Huffington Post, (scroll down for the full effect, including Tweets) he’d know that the new script calls for him to be a drunk-about-town. Whether or not, as my title implies, he’s being groomed for a full-on Gibson tirade (via Drudge) is uncertain, but would no doubt excite the Left if just the proper scene could be set.
In the meantime, these YouTube performances that make the President seem a bit of a dolt are increasingly inconvenient. John is admonished to consider the Holy Narrative, before that Narrative has to get all un-Holy on him.

Update: A taste of T. McCotter:

Steady Development In The Virginia Lawsuit To Declare ObamaCare
Both An Exercise In Foolishness And Un-Constitutional, But Mostly Un-Constitutional

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by Smitty (h/t Bill Dupray @ Liberty Pundits

Bill Dupray introduces the jurisprudence upon which much could hinge:

Judge Henry Hudson, a Bush appointee and former U.S. Attorney in the high-profile ‘Rocket Docket’ in the Eastern District of Virginia is a very solid judge. Many Virginia lawyers, including your[s] truly and Doug Mataconis, practiced before him when he was a Circuit Court judge in Fairfax County. I agree with Doug that regardless of the outcome of the ruling itself, it will be very well thought out. To put it bluntly, Judge Hudson is no slouch.

I think the key point here is that he bears no Ivy League taint.
At the WaPo, we get some insight into how it went on Thursday, 01 July: Continue reading Steady Development In The Virginia Lawsuit To Declare ObamaCare
Both An Exercise In Foolishness And Un-Constitutional, But Mostly Un-Constitutional →

A. Because It’s Funny

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Q. Why are you running this silly picture of Elena Kagan in a Nazi uniform?

Somewhat more seriously, Jeff Sessions says he’s “disappointed” with Kagan’s answers during this week’s hearings:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Orrin Hatch just came out as a “no” vote:

Hatch said Friday that a Supreme Court nominee needs “both legal experience and, more importantly, the appropriate judicial philosophy.” And he said that “General Kagan regrettably does not meet this standard.” 

Whether this had anything to do with Kagan’s thesis and Werner Sombart remains to be seen.