September 2011

In 2007 Rick Perry signed an executive order in Texas requiring all public school girls to get the vaccine Gardasil, which protects against the sexually transmitted disease HPV. The decision caused outrage on all sides of the political spectrum and Perry later had to rescind the order.

Gardasil is manufactured by Merck. During Monday night’s Republican debate, Michele Bachmann went after Perry over the executive order and tied it to money Perry had received from Merck. Perry claimed that he only received $5,000 from the drug maker, but it turns out that’s not the whole story:

As for the claim that Merck has given a $5,000 dollar contribution to the governor's campaign, that is true, but not the whole story.

Perry also received $6,000 from Merck's political action committee during a different re-election campaign.

Texas Ethics Commission records show he has accepted $29,500 from the Merck PAC during his entire tenure as governor, $22,000 of it prior to his 2007 order.

There’s also the story of Mike Toomey, Perry’s chief of staff. Toomey was the chief lobbyist for Merck and a state legislature before working for Perry. He also gives big to his buddy:

Toomey himself, has contributed more than $48,000 to Texans for Rick Perry during his decade in office.

If you can’t beat them, change the system so you can!

Here’s the story. The electoral college is mandated by the Constitution as the way to determine the winner of presidential elections, but it’s up to each state to decide how to apportion their electoral votes. Traditionally, states have chosen a winner-take-all system, because that maximizes the state’s clout. Indeed, that’s why large and close states such as Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio are so important in presidential elections.

But now, as Nick Baumann reports, Republicans who control Pennsylvania government after the 2010 elections are pushing a scheme to apportion electoral votes by Congressional district (as Maine and Nebraska currently do). The effect would be to basically make Pennsylvania a marginal player in the 2012 election. After all, most House districts (including those in the Keystone State) have lopsided partisan majorities, so they wouldn’t be in play, and parties would be unlikely to devote serious resources to try to pick off a couple of electoral votes in the swing districts — and even less unlikely to devote the massive resources it would take to capture the two remaining at-large votes, given that it would be far more efficient to use the money in much smaller states with more (winner-take-all) electoral votes up for grabs.

During last night’s GOP/Tea Party debate on CNN, Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul if under his America would a sick man without insurance be allowed to die instead of receiving care. Before Paul could even answer, the Tea Partiers started chanting “yes”. Here’s the video caught by TPM:

It really hurts my brain to think about these people and how they go out and act like the righteous when it comes to religion, yet they ignore the most basically preaching's of God and Jesus. It also makes me want to break things when I think about these hypocrites. These are the same people that sat in town halls a couple of years ago telling politicians that the government better not touch their Medicare. These people believe that they are the ones entitled, but no one else.

Righthaven, the Nevada company that is suing people all over the internet for “copyright violations” is in serious financial troubles:

Despite its backing by the billionaire Warren Stephens family, Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC warned today it may have to file for bankruptcy because of a series of setbacks in its litigation campaign.

The warning came in an emergency request by Righthaven to a federal judge in Las Vegas that he stay his order that Righthaven pay $34,045 in legal fees to attorneys who successfully defended Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn against a Righthaven lawsuit.

Righthaven has already appealed U.S. District Judge Philip Pro’s fee award to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Righthaven is also appealing the underlying rulings by Pro finding Righthaven lacked standing to sue Hoehn and – even if it had standing – that Hoehn was protected by fair use in posting an entire Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a sports betting website message board.

Righthaven says its lawsuits are necessary to deter rampant online infringement of newspaper content, but attorneys for Hoehn and other defendants claim Righthaven's suits are frivolous and are based on sham copyright assignments and are merely part of a get-rich-quick scheme.