My Thursday column and another Republican attack on poor people:
When the Republicans determined that ACORN had somehow helped President Obama win the 2008 presidential election, and following a heavily-doctored video prank by James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart, the Republicans began a legislative witch hunt that ended with the total eradication of ACORN even though it really hadn’t done anything wrong — other than being conspiratorially associated with the Obama campaign. Oh, and it helped poor people, and Republicans will have none of that.
With the ACORN victory under its belt, the GOP aimed its crosshairs at Planned Parenthood. In this case, it wasn’t necessarily because it was associated with the Obama White House, but because of yet another selectively edited and therefore highly deceptive O’Keefe/Breitbart video. The de-funding campaign by the Republicans hasn’t yet been successful at the federal level, but Republican-controlled state legislatures are hard at work on the process, too, with successes in Ohio, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — all of which have cut funding to the organization.
I’m sure you recall a video that circulated around the tubes before the election of an African American woman who was attending a roadside rally for the Obama campaign. In the video, the woman ranted somewhat incoherently about her apparently free “Obamaphone.” As soon as Drudge plastered her face above his logo, far-right Republican heads began to immediately explode over the notion of “minorities” receiving free phones from the White House as alleged bribes for volunteerism and votes.
Yesterday, Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ark) announced that he and Michele Bachmann were co-sponsoring legislation to eliminate the so-called Obamaphone program. [continue reading here]