The Sleuth: March 22, 2009 - March 28, 2009
Sen. Grassley Shocks Again
Updated, 7:00 pm, ET with comment from Grassley's office We've been waiting for a trifecta of outrageous comments by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Alas, we have it. Over the past few weeks, Grassley has suggested: 1) AIG executives should commit suicide; 2) the loathed insurance giant is "sucking the tit of the taxpayer;" and, just yesterday, 3) that he'd had bedroom relations with Senate Budget...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 27, 2009; 12:48 PM ET |
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Sean Penn Channels Plamegate and Three Stooges
Sean Penn holds up his Oscar for best actor for his role in "Milk" backstge at the 81st Academy Awards in February. (Reuters/Mike Blake) From Harvey Milk to Joe Wilson to Larry of the Three Stooges, these sure are busy times for Sean Penn. And loads of fun for Washingtonians who stumbled upon a classic Hollywood-on-the-Potomac moment at NBC News's Washington bureau Thursday when...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 27, 2009; 11:46 AM ET |
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House Budget Vote Is a Piece of Cupcake
Members of the House Budget Committee who met late into the night Tuesday to vote on the Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget plan got downright punch drunk. Perhaps the oddest moment came when Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) compared drafting the nation's tax-and-spending plan for the next fiscal year to... baking cupcakes. The cupcake riff went something like this (though, beware: it's bizarre and, really, you need...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 26, 2009; 5:25 PM ET |
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Minnesota Recount Update: All Eyes on Pawlenty
UPDATED, 2:55 p.m. ET: National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brian Walsh respond to this posting by accusing Democrats of stooping to desperate attacks on the governor. "If Democrats are so confident that they won this election then they should have no problem with state law being followed," Walsh says. "But their continued efforts to undermine state law and attack those who choose to follow it...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 26, 2009; 11:05 AM ET |
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GOP House Whip Raises Cash At Britney Spears' Concert
As Huffington Post reports, "There was more than one whip at last night's Britney Spears concert in Washington DC." Indeed, sources tell the Sleuth that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) held a fundraiser last night at the pop star's "Circus" tour concert at the Verizon Center, where, as J. Freedom du Lac reports, Spears dressed as a dominatrix and carried a bejeweled whip. Cantor...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 25, 2009; 6:51 PM ET |
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One Spurned Purple Ticket Holder Claims Victory
Obama campaign and inaugural donors Patricia Jones Blessman and her husband, Stephen Blessman, with their baby, Ben Isaac Blessman, and President Obama at a campaign event in September 2008. (Courtesy of Patricia Jones Blessman ) Those spurned purple, blue and silver ticket holders aren't very pleased with this week's not-so-detailed report on Inauguration Day chaos, which pins blame more on the oversize crowd than on...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 25, 2009; 4:00 PM ET |
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Potential GOP 2012 Candidate's Response to Obama
The man who has been mentioned as the Republicans' top choice to lead them out of the wilderness in 2012 sure had a laid back reaction to President Obama's televised news conference tonight. In fact, he had no reaction at all. "Having a great italian dinner at capri restorante in mclean with callista and her mother bernita bisek," Newt Gingrich posted on Twitter. His comment...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 24, 2009; 10:13 PM ET |
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Vitter, Off the Hook... Again
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has dodged yet another bullet. The senator has escaped further scrutiny in his alleged airport rage incident earlier this month in which he set off an alarm in the United Airlines terminal of Washington Dulles International Airport after opening a closed security door. The Transportation Security Administration, which had been reviewing the incident, has determined Vitter violated no security rules at...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 24, 2009; 4:00 PM ET |
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PR Gurus Assess Obama's 'Punch Drunk' TV Moment
Steve Kroft interviews President Obama for "60 Minutes" in the Oval Office. Should President Obama be laughing right now? The most memorable moment of the president's interview on "60 Minutes" Sunday night came when reporter Steve Kroft asked, "Are you punch drunk?" That came after Obama, in what could otherwise be deemed a nearly flawless interview, inexplicably chuckled as he talked about the disaster that...
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Mary Ann Akers
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March 23, 2009; 2:59 PM ET |
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