Rachel Brown (Dining Room Table-MA), is challenging Barney Frank… again:

Ms. Brown said her exchange with Mr. Frank inspired her to run against him Sept. 14 in the Democratic primary in the state’s 4th Congressional District.

Watch the video to see who this genius is:

“I didn’t realize at the time that if you had a better idea, you should take their seat,” said 29-year-old Ms. Brown, a devotee of economist Lyndon LaRouche.

Barney Frank:

“I regard her as an example of the price you pay for free speech [...] I don’t think she is very rational.”

I would love to see the two of them debate. Frank v. the irrational piece of furniture.  She’d probably come off very wooden.

Oh. Em. Gee! ClusterFox lied! There goes their stellar reputation:

Arlington, MA, June 30, 2010 – School officials responded today to recent misleading reports regarding the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the Arlington Public Schools, a public school district in suburban Boston serving 4,700 students. This response followed the release of stories by Fox News incorrectly maintaining that the Arlington Public Schools had banned the Pledge of Allegiance.

It’s a good thing ClusterFox so rarely errs. They’re usually so on top-o’-the news, so ready with the facts, what with their crack anchors and all.

It must have just been a bad day. Maybe they were all busy watching Glenn Beck reruns.

Contrary to Fox News reports, the School Committee did not ban the Pledge of Allegiance in the Arlington Public Schools. Rather, the Committee left discretion in the hands of building administrators. Currently, the Pledge of Allegiance is recited in all seven of the District’s elementary schools and in the middle school. In some cases, this is done over the loudspeaker. In others, individual teachers lead the recitation.

Or perhaps the Foxers just don’t understand English.

Gasp! Deport them! Now!

[School Committee Chairman Joseph A. Curro, Jr.] noted that while the student has at times requested a formal voluntary recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, last week he unexpectedly and explicitly demanded that the School Committee enforce a state statute that was ruled constitutionally invalid by the Supreme Judicial Court in 1977. This statute threatens teachers with monetary penalties for failure to recite the pledge or to force the students in their charge to do likewise. The Arlington School Committee was specifically advised in a memo from Town Counsel Juliana Rice that this law is unconstitutional and unenforceable.

Curro pointed out that the motion before the School Committee was for a new policy, and that it should probably have been ruled out of order. .

Curro comes out and says it. Fixed Noise distorts, misinforms, messes with the facts, going so far as to smear a school. In other words, it’s business as usual:

“It is unfortunate that the national media has chosen to distort this very serious debate in a manner, which so badly misinforms the public. Recent reports have done little to present the facts about our school system and our community, and have been seized upon by many people throughout the country to target our dedicated school leaders with unwarranted hate mail and threats.”

Shorter Curro: Hey, ClusterFox, you lie!

H/t: realitygal

After the manufactured controversy over Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation (I’m doing a “Do I Look Like a Lesbian/Straight Person?” Blunt webisode in retaliation… feel free to submit a video), and now this, I am once again balding myself by pulling all my own hair out:

A Roman Catholic school in Massachusetts has withdrawn its acceptance of an 8-year-old boy with lesbian parents, saying their relationship was “in discord” with church teachings, according to one of the boys’ mothers.

A similar incident took place in Colorado.

“I’m accustomed to discrimination, I suppose, at my age and my experience as a gay woman,” the mother said. “But I didn’t expect it against my child.“

There is no reason in the world this mom should have to accustom herself to discrimination. Her child has now been exposed first hand to bigotry, hate, and fear, even at the very safe haven his school should have provided him… and he’s only eight.

This child is refused a place in a classroom, a place of learning, because the Catholic Church doesn’t approve of his parents’ love. That’s not the kind of lesson we should be teaching our kids, right Principal Cynthia Duggan and parish priest Rev. James Rafferty?

Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage.

The woman said she and her partner don’t regularly attend church but are Christian and wanted their son to have a strong education that also emphasized Christian values, such as compassion and empathy. [...]

“There are many different non-traditional families that fall under the umbrella of the Catholic Church, and I guess we assumed we would fall under one of those,” she said.

The parents filled out their applications properly, paid the required deposit, and didn’t hide a thing when they met with Duggan and Rafferty. It took a few days before Duggan called to pull the rug out from under them.

Love affects some people very strangely. So much for compassion and empathy, and to hell with a little boy’s sense of security and stability. Yank him out and throw him away, because two women who adore him and each other don’t live the way the church wants them to.

H/t: Think Progress

By GottaLaff
So much for campaign buttons with the words, Pink Leather Shorts 2012:

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) said he would not run for president in 2012 and that he backs Mitt Romney (R) for the Republican presidential nomination, the Boston Globe reports.

Said Brown: “Yes, absolutely, 2012, I’m ruling it out.”

When asked if he would run for president at a later date, he said, “I’m not even going to jump at that. Nice try.”

By GottaLaff

CBSNewsOnline — April 14, 2010 — Singer Lloyd Marcus performs the “American Tea Party Anthem” at a Tea Party rally in Boston, Massachusetts

Look! An African American at a Tea Tantrum rally! And he “raps” [sic]! Not much of a singer, though.

In fact, this is just embarrassing:

“I’m an America-a-a-a-a-a-aaaaan!!”

Hey Lloyd, if you have to insist that you’re an America-a-a-a-a-aaan!, you’re “not racists”, you’re “not stupid”, and that you’re “gonna win” that loudly and obnoxiously, then there very well may be room for reasonable doubt.

H/t: ahuntre

By GottaLaff

What does it take? Rachel is magnificent as always, but SenatorFold Scotty “Pink Leather Shorts” Brown refuses to listen. It’s hard to make it clearer than this: SCOTT BROWN IS A LIAR.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

“Senator Brown, you’re lying!”… and making money off those whoppers about Rachel Maddow, who has asked you to stop every which way she can.

As Rachel noted, he’s been in office for about 7 weeks, and has already lied repeatedly.

Way to start off, Sparky. Nobody could ask for a more credible representative than you.

By GottaLaff

The Maddow Blog

Why anyone would want to mess with Rachel is beyond me:

The full-page ad explains that she’s not running against Republican Sen. Scott Brown in 2012. Brown sent a fundraising letter suggesting that he’d be facing the “liberal MSNBC anchor” and needed donations to fend her off. “I’m sure she’s a nice person — I just don’t think America can afford her liberal politics,” he wrote.

Scott Brown hasn’t acknowledged Rachel’s denials (by admitting his statements were untrue), and he continues to perpetuate a lie. He may rile up his base a little, but by alienating and smearing a constituent, he can’t be making new friends.

As for Brown, his spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said: “It was an open secret that the Democrats were trying to recruit Rachel Maddow to run against Scott Brown in 2012. Now that she’s said no, I’m sure they’ll scurry around looking for someone else. Maybe Keith Olbermann’s available.”

Yes, we were all begging Rachel to run. Where was I during all this? I never heard a word.

Here are Rachel’s segments on this ridiculous matter:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By GottaLaff

But will the Senate ethics committee investigate? Don’t be silly:

Jennifer Firth, a local mortgage banker who was elected to the Board of Selectmen in 1999, filed a civil defamation suit against Brown in July of 2000, alleging that he had harassed her when she worked on his campaign in 1998, and then tried to smear her reputation around town with forged letters and emails.

I can see the attraction, what with his affinity for the pink leather shorts and all. Who could resist a guy like that?

She also alleged that Brown told several people that he’d had an “intimate relationship” with her and that he had a stack of sexually explicit letters that Firth had sent him. In her suit, Firth says that she’d never been sexually intimate with Brown, nor did she ever send him the aforementioned letters. A 2000 article in the local paper, the Sun Chronicle reported that Brown had denied the charges; for her part, Firth said she felt that filing the suit was “the only way I could stop this.”

Allegedly.

But wait! There’s more! Two days later….

Two days after the lawsuit was filed, Jennifer Firth’s lawyer, Harvey Schwartz, filed a motion to withdraw as her counsel, saying that “to the best of [Schwartz's] knowledge, information and belief, the above allegations [by Firth] are not supported by ‘good grounds.’” The next day, Jennifer Firth withdrew her suit. It was dismissed with prejudice, which means it can never be re-filed. Brown told a local newspaper that her lawyer had decided to withdraw after he was presented with letters and e-mail messages that proved she’d been harassing Brown.

Maybe Firth should go before the ethics committee.

Come to think of it, maybe the ethics committee should go before the ethics committee.

Who paid Firth off, I wonder… Or maybe she had no case. Or maybe … Or maybe…

Rushpublics are so good at making a lot out of allegations and conjecture, enough to ruin careers. Dems on the other hand….

More details, speculation, and the court documents here.

But will we get the backstory on the pink leather shorts?

(CNN) – Sen. Scott Brown will reflect on “his family background, his early career and his ascent to the office of Massachusetts senator” in a new memoir, the publisher HarperCollins announced Wednesday.

Brown’s office said last month that the Republican star was in the process of landing a book deal and had hired Washington attorney Bob Barnett to help navigate the process.

HarperCollins, which also published former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s best-selling memoir “Going Rogue,” acquired the rights to the Brown book and will publish it in early 2011. The publisher called Brown’s win in January’s Massachusetts special Senate election “one of the biggest political coups of the decade.”

By GottaLaff

Get a load of Mr. Independence:

Brown took to the Senate floor Tuesday to announce he would vote for cloture, or to end a Republican filibuster, on a bill extending unemployment benefits and tax credits. This, despite the fact he opposes the bill and technically the filibuster helped his cause.

“I have very serious concerns about the overall cost of the bill,” Brown told the chamber, “but my vote for cloture signals that I believe we need to keep the process moving.” He also said, “there has been a week of debate and allowing this bill to receive an up-and-down vote, would be a step, I feel, in the right direction.”

With Brown’s help, the nearly $140 billion bill cleared the procedural hurdle on a vote of 66-34, setting it up for passage.

I keep waiting for another shoe to drop. I’m not even sure what that meant, but suffice it to say Brown makes me uneasy. Maybe it’s the SenatorFold, or the $750 pink leather shorts.

However, his two helpful votes are greatly appreciated.

By GottaLaff

Via an e-mail alert from Politico:

Representative William Delahunt (D-Mass.) will not seek reelection, the Boston Globe is reporting. “It’s got nothing to do with politics,” Delahunt told the Globe.

Another one bites the dust….

UPDATE:

“It’s got nothing to do with politics,” the Quincy Democrat said today. “Life is about change. I think it’s healthy. It’s time.”

The 68-year-old lawmaker said he has been considering leaving the House for several years, but was talked out of it two years ago by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who convinced his friend he should stay and help President Obama with his first-term agenda. [...]

Once Kennedy died last year, Delahunt said he grappled with whether to stay and work on the issues Kennedy held dear. [...]

But the congressman said he concluded that after nearly four decades in public service, the grueling House schedule was taking its toll on his personal life. [...]

But the congressman — while declining to name a favored successor — said he is “confident it will stay Democratic.”