michele bachmann

There is no doubt about it that Michele Bachmann is a darling of the Tea Party and a heart throb for many wingnuts. It also turns out that she may be in some serious legal trouble, per The Daily Beast:

The Daily Beast has learned that federal investigators are now interviewing former Bachmann campaign staffers nationwide about alleged intentional campaign-finance violations. The investigators are working on behalf of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which probes reported improprieties by House members and their staffs and then can refer cases to the House Ethics Committee.

“I have been interviewed by investigators,” says Peter Waldron, a former Bachmann staffer who’s embroiled in his own fight with his former boss, involving his allegations of pay-to-play politics and improper payments by the campaign—making him one of several members of Bachmann’s inner circle who’ve fallen out with the woman they once hoped would become commander in chief. While he was careful to avoid specifics in regard to the investigating body, Waldron said that “investigators came [and] interviewed me and are interviewing other staff members across the country.”

Two other former staffers confirmed the existence of the investigation this weekend, and on Monday Bachmann’s campaign counsel, William McGinley, of the high-powered firm Patton Boggs, confirmed that the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) was looking into the congresswoman’s presidential campaign last year.

That she decided to become a citizen of a nation known for it!

Rep. Michele Bachmann is now officially a Swiss miss.

Bachmann (R-Minn.) recently became a citizen of Switzerland, making her eligible to run for office in the tiny European nation, according to a Swiss TV report Tuesday.

Arthur Honegger, a reporter for public broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen, told POLITICO the Swiss consulate in Chicago has confirmed that the former Republican presidential candidate became a citizen March 19.

And Bachmann said something I can agree with:

Asked if she would run for office in Switzerland — as she is now eligible to do — Bachmann joked that the competition “would be very stiff because they are very good,” referring to the parliamentarians behind her.

Yes they are! Switzerland used to have a healthcare mess much like ours here in the good ole' U.S. Luckily their "very good" parliamentarians were able to come together and create a decent healthcare program. They weren't out there crying "socialism' and saying how others were going to destroy their country. Nope - that is left to American politicians like Michele Bachmann.

Newt Gingrich is struggling to regain being anybody in the GOP field, so now he is grasping at straws:

Newt Gingrich is seeking to salvage his Iowa campaign by going after President Obama -- and suggesting the president give up his salary in 2012 because of reports he will spend most of the year seeking re-election.

At a campaign appearance this morning in Independence, Iowa, Gingrich blasted reports that Obama and his re-election team will run against a "do-nothing" Congress in 2012.

"For the president's staff to announce that he's now going to govern without Congress," Gingrich said, reports the Des Moines Register. "Well, that means he's not going to govern. He's going to be a candidate for an entire year. He shouldn't take his salary.

How about this; for December of 2011 Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul will get $18,000 in pay, yet both have an antecedence record of less than 5%. Does Newt feel they should do the same? How about surrogates, like Senator Rand Paul, who is now out on the campaign trail with his father. Should he forego his pay?

Or what about Newt himself. During his tenure in Congress, did he ever once sacrifice his salary while campaigning? No.

This is nothing but Newt grasping at straws and it shows what a two faced bastard he really is. Our political system certainly is screwed up and this is one of the reasons for it, but to sit there and demand only one person make this kind of sacrifice while others, including Newt himself, never have and never will, shows the hypocrisy that people like Newt will resort to just to pander to the fringe base. Of course that is the Newt we all have come to know. Don't you screw around on your wife, only I can. Now you can see why his campaign has imploded.

Appearing as the second story on the politics section of Huffington Post right now is this story:

She's out there calling President Obama a "hater"! Really grabs the attention - doesn't it?

Big problem though. Here's the actual headline:

Michele Bachmann Calls President Of Iran A 'Hater'

With the omission of two words, "of Iran", Huffington Post has now joined the ranks of Matt Drudge and Fox News. Their editorial standards are gone.

I really do not enjoy having to sit here and defend Michele Bachmann, but on this case I must. A lot of people will just read that headline and go out there "Bachmann called Obama a hater", when in fact she didn't. There's more than enough crazy things Bachmann has said to sink her if she was even a contender for the White House, which she isn't.

But now Huffington Post has gone out there and caused damage. A lot on the right will point to this as more evidence of a "liberal media bias" and I can't really blame them. It's unprofessional and highly distasteful and this actually angers me more than the lies and spin put out by the right wing media. We should be better than them and this is not how to do that.

There's an emerging new message coming from the GOP and that message is that the United States should give up and just become China. This is coming from the field of Republican Presidential contenders.

Michele Bachmann seems to have started this, when she proclaimed our country should be more like China on social-economical issues. Now we have Newt Gingrich saying that our child labor laws are "stupid". He seems more intent on us having the child labor laws of China, which is to say none.

It's really amazing to see America's right embrace the type of governance we see in one of the few remaining communist countries on the planet. Could you imagine this embrace during the Reagan years, not to mention the time of Joe McCarthy?

I am just waiting now for someone in the media to actually call these Republicans out for their new found love of communism. If this was a Democratic candidate saying this stuff, the "liberal media" would instantly label them as commies. Perhaps it's time they show the same for the right?

Newsweek has just published a in-depth look into some of the “anti-government spending” darlings of the right and how they actually love government spending, when it’s for them:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Republican leadership’s tether to the Tea Party, flutters the hearts of the government-bashing, budget-slicing faithful with his relentless attacks on runaway federal spending. To Cantor, an $8 billion high-speed rail connecting Las Vegas to Disneyland is wasteful “pork-barrel spending.” The Virginia Republican set up the “You Cut” Web site to demonstrate how easy it is to slash government programs. And he made the Department of Housing and Urban Development the poster child for waste when he disclosed that the agency was paying for housing for Ph.D.s.

But away from the cameras, Cantor sometimes pulls right up to the spending trough, including the very stimulus law he panned in public. Letters obtained by Newsweek show him pressing the Transportation Department to spend nearly $3 billion in stimulus money on a high-speed-rail project—not the one he derided in Nevada, but another in his home state. “Virginia ... will demonstrate that this historic investment in rail will create jobs, reduce congestion, spur economic growth and improve our environment,” says a letter he signed with other Virginia members in October 2009, cribbing President Obama’s own argument for the stimulus.

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.

The big buzz today has been the change in the GOP Presidential field. Essentially we are now looking at three candidates. Here they are in this screenshot from the HuffPo:

So the three we have to watch out for are Romney, Perry and Bachmann. All three of them are scary and can pose a possible challenge to President Obama, but one really stands out. This is one that I have warned of before - Michele Bachmann (see here, here and here). Still, I hear countless on the left saying there is no way Bachmann will get the nomination, let alone win. I have to disagree with these people and our changing political landscape is all the evidence I need.

First off there were dozens of races last year the pundits and politicians thought a fringe candidate wouldn't win, yet we ended up with a lot of "Tea Party" candidates in Congress. This should have been a wake up call to people on the right and left, but it wasn't. Instead they still look at candidates like Bachmann and feel there is no way she can win.

So how can this all go against the left? Let's start with the primary. First off we have Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, both of which don't have the best records in terms of conservative values. Bachmann places a lot better and her lack of actual leadership can actually prove to be a plus against these two.