To his credit, Romney isn’t taking this latest humiliation lying down. He’s hitting Santorum with the “Washington Insider” label — and it’s likely to stick.

Romney sounded less confident than last weekend when, fresh off strong victories in Nevada and Florida, he pivoted to attacks on President Barack Obama. Instead, he contrasted his record as an outsider with that of Santorums as a former Pennsylvania senator and Washington insider in the first time hes mentioned Santorums name on the stump in weeks.

Washington cannot reform itself, Romney said at the University of Colorados campus here. And Washington will never be reformed by those who have been compromised by the culture of Washington. This is a clear choice. Im the only person in this race, Republican or Democrat, who has never served a day in Washington. In the world I come from, leadership is about starting a business, not trying to get a bill out of committee.

…Romneys surrogates began their attacks on Santorum on Monday, when it became clear the former senator was gaining on him. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Romney ally, attacked Santorum for earmarking while in Congress, and attacking the ex-senator via email for his criticisms of Romney for his health care bill while governor.

Former 2012 hopeful and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who was ultimately his humiliated by Romney’s loss to Santorum in his own state, took to his role as Romney surrogate with considerable gusto, even before the Minnesota caucuses.

Former Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty released a statement Monday attacking Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum leading up to Tuesdays Minnesota Republican caucuses.

The former governor dropped out of the Republican race in August after a poor showing in the Iowa Ames Straw poll and shortly thereafter he endorsed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Now, with a day remaining until the Minnesota Republican caucuses and Mr. Santorum leading Mr. Romney in a recent poll of Minnesota voters, Mr. Pawlenty is hoping his popularity in Minnesota will help sway voters to select his candidate Mr. Romney.

…One of those attacks consisted of comments from Mr. Pawlenty regarding Mr. Santorums record as a Pennsylvania senator. The former Minnesota governor calls Mr. Santorum a nice guy, but attacks his record as having called for too many earmarks.

Rick Santorum is a nice guy, but he is simply not ready to be President, said Mr. Pawlenty in a statement. As a U.S. Senator, he was a leading earmarker and pork-barrel spender. He described himself as very proud of the billions of dollars in pork-barrel projects he championed, and promised to defend the wasteful spending.

Apparently, that one hit home. Romney and surrogates must have gotten something right, because Santorum actually defended his earmarks.

Rick Santorum, under attack from Mitt Romney’s campaign for his history of securing earmarks during his time in the Senate, said Monday his record was similar to many other conservative politicians.

“Jim DeMint, a favorite of the tea party, supported earmarks at the same time I did,” Santorum said on CNN’s “John King USA.”

“I’ve now opposed earmarks because they were abused. But during the time I was supporting them, so was Jim DeMint and just about every other member of Congress. It was abused and should be banned. I’m taking the position of banning them.”

…Santorum said on CNN that Romney also supported earmarks before Republicans collectively shunned the practice.

I don’t know if “I was for earmarks before I was against earmarks” counts as much of a defense, but Santorum does have a point: until recently, everybody was doing it.

I can’t vouch for whether Santorum is a “nice guy,” but labeling Rick Santorum a Washington insider is so easy that even Rick Perry could do it. That’s because Rick Santorum is a Washington insider.

Santorum’s work the with “K Street Project,” not only established Santorum as a Washington power broker during the heady days when the GOP held a virtual lock on government, but probably laid the foundation for Santorum’s post-Senate career as a lobbyist.

Beginning in 2001, after Republicans seized control of Congress and the White House, then-Sen. Santorum (R-Pa.) began hosting Tuesday morning meetings with a select group of lobbyists. These meetings were part of a larger plan originally launched in the 1990s by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), conservative activist Grover Norquist and others when the GOP retook the House of Representatives after 40 years of Democratic control to pressure lobbying firms and trade associations to dump their Democratic lobbyists and replace them with Republicans. Named after the Washington business corridor famous for housing lobbying firms, the K Street Project was aimed at installing a permanent Republican majority in Washington.

Journalist Nicholas Confessore explained Santorum’s role in the K Street Project in a 2003 Washington Monthly article: “Santorum’s responsibility is to make sure each [top lobbying job] is filled by a loyal Republican a senator’s chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors.”

This wasn’t just backroom chatter. There were real direct effects on policy. When Jack Valenti, the longtime chief of the Motion Picture Association of America, retired, Republicans led by Santorum and DeLay sought to pressure the trade group to hire a Republican. The MPAA ultimately replaced Valenti with former Clinton administration Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, deeply offending leaders of the K Street Project.

Santorum brought up the Glickman hire at a closed-door Republican caucus meeting and was quoted in a 2004 Roll Call article saying, “Yeah, we had a meeting and, yeah, we talked about making sure that we have fair representation on K Street. … I admit that I pay attention to who is hiring, and I think it’s important for leadership to pay attention.”

Later in 2004, the Republicans in Congress voted down $1.5 billion in subsidies for the movie industry. Grover Norquist told Roll Call at the time that the movie industry’s hire of Glickman was one of the reasons Republicans scuttled the subsidies. “Hollywood has recently expressed contempt for the Republican leadership in the House, Senate and White House,” Norquist said.

And when it comes to lobbying, Santorum was definitely a player in Washington’s “Inside Game” (as explained by expert player Jack Abramoff.)

Santorum’s connections with Big Coal lobbyists are part of the story, too. Santorum’s “aw, shucks” demeanor when speaking about his coal-mining grandfather, and his decision to come to the aid of “a local coal company from my area.” Santorum wasn’t so much helping the little guy as going to work for an old friend he’d helped out many times before, as a member of the Senate.

Rick Santorum likes to brag about how he helped a poor local company fight big, bad government regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. “My grandfather was a coal miner,” Santorum said at a debate in New Hampshire this week. “So I contacted a local coal company from my area. I said, look, I want to join you in that fight. I want to work together with you.”

But Consol Energy, the company for which Santorum was a “consultant,” wasn’t some bare-bones local outfit-it’s one of the largest coal mining companies in the United States, and its largest shareholder is the German utility RWE. And Santorum wasn’t doing volunteer work: He was paid quite handsomely for his services, to the tune of $142,500 from 2010 to August 2011. He only ended his role with Consol when he launched his presidential bid last spring.

Santorum’s relationship with the coal company began long before his consulting gig; Santorum and Consol had a mutually profitable association during Santorum’s tenure in the Senate, too. Consol donated more than $73,800 to Santorum during his time as a legislator while simultaneously spending more than $1 million lobbying Congress on pollution limits, mine reclamation, worker health benefits, and tax policy, according to lobbying disclosure forms filed with the US Senate Office of Public Records.

…It’s not entirely clear what Santorum did during his tenure as a Consol consultant, which started in 2007 after he was defeated for reelection. A spokesperson for the company told the New York Times he was hired “to provide strategic counsel on a variety of public policy-related issues.” Although he was never registered as a lobbyist, former legislators can still be adept at maximizing their clients’ influence without actually having to officially register as lobbyists under the law.

Big Coal’s may have been Santorum’s favorite lobby, it wasn’t the only one corporate interest. Politico also reported on Santorum’s seven-year-old attack on the National Weather Service. In 2005, Santorum sponsored legislation that while leaving the agency intact would have severely restricted its ability to distribute information directly to the public. The Political article says opponents criticized the bill as a reflection of an “outdated worldview” that government-sponsored information should flow through private, for-profit entities before reaching citizens.

But former congressman Alan Grayson writes that Santorum’s anti-NWS crusade had little to do with conservative principles.

Now you must be thinking, “Wow, that guy Santorum is a REAL conservative.” Santorum recognizes that government weather forecasts are meteorological socialism; they are a serious infringement on your constitutional right not to know whether it will rain tomorrow. Santorum sees that weather forecasts are a government takeover of the skies. In fact, Santorum is such an astute and profound conservative thinker that he probably realizes that traffic lights are a government takeover of the roads.

But this note is not about traffic lights. It’s about Rick Santorum and government weather forecasts. And why Rick Santorum tried to ban them.

Here’s why. It’s because AccuWeather is a commercial weather forecasting company, and AccuWeather employees gave Santorum more than $5,000 in campaign contributions. Then he introduced the bill. Which subsequently and consequently led to Santorum being named as one of Congress’s “most corrupt politicians.” Which is saying a lot.

Mitt Romney was wrong when he said “Americans are the only people on earth” who put their hands over their hearts during the national anthem, but he’s right about Santurm’s “Washington insider” status and earmarks addiction.

No surprise here. Like I said before, one of the great things about the Republican primary seasons is that America gets to see how much Republicans get right when they attack each other. After Tuesday, it looks like the GOP is in for a prolonged battle, and they’ll probably spend most of it confirming the worst about each other — while America watches.

Rick Santorum says his Tuesday victories prove that “conservatives are beginning to get it.” As the GOP primaries drag on, more and more Americans are likely to “get it,” where the GOP is concerned.

A federal appeals court Tuesday struck down California’s ban on same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on gay marriage as early as next year.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that limited marriage to one man and one woman, violated the U.S. Constitution. The architects of Prop. 8 have vowed to appeal.

The ruling was narrow and likely to be limited to California.

The ruling upheld a decision by retired Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who struck down the ballot measure in 2010 after holding an unprecedented trial on the nature of sexual orientation and the history of marriage.

In a separate decision, the appeals court refused to invalidate Walker’s ruling on the grounds that he should have disclosed he was in a long term same-sex relationship. Walker, a Republican appointee who is openly gay, said after his ruling that he had been in a relationship with another man for 10 years. He has never said whether he and partner wished to marry.

Freedom To Marry’s Evan Wolfson wraps it up nicely in this statement.

“Today’s powerful court ruling striking down the infamous Prop 8 affirms basic American values and helps tear down a discriminatory barrier to marriage that benefits no one while making it harder for people to take care of their loved ones. The Ninth Circuit rightly held that a state simply may not take a group of people and shove them outside the law, least of all when it comes to something as important as the commitment and security of marriage. We salute the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which brought this challenge to Prop 8.

“This monumental appellate decision restores California to the growing list of states and countries that have ended exclusion from marriage, and will further accelerate the surging nationwide majority for marriage. As this and other important challenges to marriage discrimination move through the courts around the country, Freedom to Marry calls on all Americans to join us in ensuring that together we make as strong a case in the court of public opinion as our legal advocates are making in the courts of law. By growing the majority for marriage, winning more states, and tackling federal discrimination – Freedom to Marry’s ‘Roadmap to Victory’ – we maximize our chances of winning when one case or another finally reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The latest self-destruction of Newt Gingrich will be televised. If he’s able to carry on after losing the Nevada Primary to Mitt Romney, and make good on his promise to campaign all the way to the convention in Tampa, we can look forward to more performances like his post-Iowa temper tantrum, his post-Florida flame-out, and his bizarre concession-speech-cum-press-conference after Nevada.

Maybe Newt really is banking on a Super Tuesday southern revival strategy, but given his campaign’s still $600,000 in debt and he’s pretty close to losing his sugar daddy to Mitt Romney, even Newt know his candidacy is largely theoretical at this point. The thing is, for Newt it’s not about winning anymore. That makes him dangerous to the GOP in at least a couple ways.

Personifying the Politics of Personal Obstruction

First, Newt personifies the politics of obstruction the GOP has practiced since 2008, and ratcheted up after 2010. In fact, Gingrich practically invented it. Just by being Newt, he draws a parallel to the debacle of government shutdown that he promoted and presided over as speaker. Just by being Newt, he serves as a reminder that while Republicans have thus far avoided another shutdown, they have nearly brought our government to a standstill since 2010, rendering it ineffective in the midst of a crisis.

There is no greater pathology in today’s Congress than obstructionism, from Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) refusal to raise the debt ceiling in July to Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) taking disaster relief funds for Hurricane Irene hostage. Both parties have long used Congress’s procedural rules to promote legislation they favor, but Gingrich created something new. “There is the assumption—pioneered by Newt Gingrich himself, as early as the 1970s—that the minority wins when Congress accomplishes less,” Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the number-two Democrat in the House, explained in a 2009 speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “Gingrich’s proposition, and maybe accurately, was that as long as…our party cooperate[s] with Democrats and get[s] 20 or 30 percent of what we want and they get to say they solved the problem and had a bipartisan bill, there’s no incentive for the American people to change leadership,” Hoyer told the Washington Post after the speech. “To some degree, he was proven right in 1994.”

In many ways, the obstructionist minority that Hoyer faced two years ago was following a playbook written by Gingrich over a decade earlier. Gingrich, in fact, took the debt ceiling hostage fifteen years before Boehner did, demanding huge, partisan cuts. In that case, the GOP backed down after President Clinton vetoed their spending bills and Moody’s warned of a credit downgrade. When Boehner refused to raise the debt ceiling, the threat of default lowered the US’s credit rating and was resolved by an complicated process involving a “supercommittee” and a two-step raising of the debt limit over a year. And it was Gingrich who, in one of his first acts as Speaker, patented the practice of refusing to approve disaster relief funds if they weren’t offset with spending cuts. Gingrich even held out after the Oklahoma City bombing later that year, prompting the Philadelphia Daily News to write, “Even Newt Gingrich must lose a little sleep at the idea of making political hay out of the mini-civil war that struck Oklahoma City.”

Of course, Gingrich’s greatest act of obstructionist brinkmanship was the 1995 and 1996 government shutdowns. Thanks to his refusal to concede on spending on social services, the government closed for five days in 1995, longer than the previous eight government shutdowns, and for a whopping twenty-one days a year later — the longest shutdown in history. Thanks to Gingrich’s obstinacy, health and welfare services for veterans were curtailed, Social Security checks were delayed, tens of thousands of visa applications went unprocessed and “numerous sectors of the economy” we negatively impacted, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Republicans still haven’t drowned the government in a bathtub. But they have slipped it some Ambien and started running the bath water, using a political playbook that Newt Gringrich wrote.

Republicans have done this in the middle of an economic crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression; precisely the moment when the government is needed to do what the private sector either cannot or will not. How many Americans have put this much together is hard to say, but the dismal approval ratings of the Republican House suggest that more and more Americans are placing some the blame for government inaction and ineffectiveness on the Republican-dominated House, which has been singularly focused on stopping even president Obama’s modest attempts remedying the unemployment deficit and the economic crisis.

No Solutions? No Problem.

Then there’s the other nightmare Newt is giving the GOP. First he exposes the roots of their obstructionist politics. Then he exposes their utter lack of solutions, at a time when America desperately needs solutions that will turn the economy around and launch a real economic recovery.

The problem for Newt and the rest of the Republicans is that they can’t blame the fact that more Americans see economic inequality as a problem at president Obama’s feet. The Occupy movement can be credited with pushing the issue to the forefront of our national politics, but happened largely because of economic conditions that add up the three decades of stagnant wages and increased costs of living for middle- and working-class Americans, just barely covered by cheap credit that allowed families to simulate increased living standards, until the economic crisis brought the whole house of cards tumbling down.

That’s what makes it “impossible” for Republicans to talk about the kind economic inequality that Bain and other vulture capital firms leave in their wake, as a part of just doing business.

Newt has, basically, created the perfect storm for Republicans going into the South Carolina primaries, with Mitt Romney — the Man from Bain, who still smells like a Wall Street boardroom, and probably now looks more than ever to South Carolina primary voters “like the guy who laid you off.” Newt has forced the Republicans into a conversation they can’t hold, and aren’t even remotely prepared for.

The funny part is that Newt ever thought they could avoid it, and that Republicans still think they can avoid it.

I said earlier that the reason Republicans freaked out when Newt launched his attack on Mitt Romney’s days at Bain Capital was because he pretty much pointed a double barrel spotlight on two things Republicans dread discussing: economic inequality and the GOP’s lack any plan or political will to do anything about it. That’s classic Newt. On the one hand, he wants everyone to stop talking about economic inequality. Then just when the GOP’s traveling side-show of a primary race rolls into some of the most economically devastated parts of the country, inadvertently rubs everyone’s nose in it, while also making it clear that they don’t plan to do anything about it, and don’t particularly want to.

Newt exposes that not only do Republicans have no solutions for our economic and unemployment crises, but the don’t see that anything needs solving. No solutions? No problem!

The Party’s Over

Finally, there’s one problem Newt and Mitt have in common. Newt may have boasted of carrying the “tea party people” after Florida, but Romney is making inroads to the tea party. That is, Romney’s trying to court what’s left of the tea party.The lack of unity in the Nevada tea party may reflect what one movement leader had to say about the tea party: The tea party is dead.

It was the great wildcard going into the 2012 election cycle. Republican Party insiders openly worried the Tea Party might knock off the establishment presidential candidate, just as it knocked out establishment picks in the chaotic 2010 congressional races. Party heavyweights wondered whom the upstart movement would get behind and whether Mitt Romney could even get through the early states, given the once-raging Tea Party elements in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

But after months of wondering how the Tea Party would change the primary game, leaders inside the movement admit they never came in off the sidelines. For the Tea Party movement, the 2012 presidential primaries have been a bust.

“The Tea Party movement is dead. It’s gone,” says Chris Littleton, the cofounder of the Ohio Liberty Council, a statewide coalition of Tea Party groups in Ohio. “I think largely the Tea Party is irrelevant in the primaries. They aren’t passionate about any of the candidates, and if they are passionate, they’re for Ron Paul.”

That leaves Gingrich to wrestle with a Republican establishment that wants him even less than it wants Romney, and to ponder a question one “concerned Republican” in junior high posed in an open letter to Gingrich on the Huffington Post.

First, let’s take a look at your chances of becoming the nominee: National polls have you polling pretty well, but a Romney victory tonight in Nevada seals him as the clear national frontrunner. As for the next few primaries, Romney leads polls (albeit very old polls) in all except for your home state of Georgia. (Congratulations, but that’s just not gonna cut it.) Romney is not only better organized, better funded and better known, but also better liked. Delegate counts have you far behind Romney. All signs point to a clear-cut Romney nomination. So thanks for making it interesting, but there’s not much more for you to do.

Second, take a long hard look at exactly what you are doing to the Republican party. We get it, you are a true conservative, and you can motivate the base. But it has become very clear that the Republican establishment doesn’t like you. Sad but true, they make the real decisions. While you stay in the race, they have to try to beat you, and not Obama. With you still in the race, Obama can sit back and watch you tear into Mitt Romney for being wealthy and successful (which only hurts him among critical swing voters!). While you exist as a challenger, you take money that Romney should be spending on ads against the president. Surely, as a man who plays politics better than most politicians, you can see this.

The only thing that confuses me is where you think your path to victory is.

Newt is a lot of things, but dumb (usually) isn’t one of them. He’s at least as smart as a junior high student. Whatever rhetoric he spouts for the media, Newt probably doesn’t see a path to victory. Newt knows there isn’t one. Newt knows he’s not going to be the nominee, but he’s happy to be a spoiler.

Which brings us to the Super Tuesday contests of March 6, in both such industrial Midwestern states as Ohio and such never-really-deprovincialized Southern states as Georgia—among numerous others. Gingrich is clearly counting on winning several of those Southern states, while Romney’s strength lies outside the South. But as March 6 approaches, more debates will loom, and Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul will continue to pull Romney to the right. What really will keep pulling Romney rightward, of course, is the mere continuation of contested GOP primaries. That’s the significance of Newt’s continuing to hang in: It delays and makes more difficult Romney’s pivot back to the center. Since the GOP contest began in earnest in Iowa last December, dragging Romney ever further to the right, his approval rating among independents has declined almost 20 percent. The longer the contest continues, the later, and more awkward, Romney’s re-moderatification will be.  The wrath of Newt, that is, benefits no one more than Barack Obama.

Whether this persuades Sheldon Adelson to cease his care and feeding of Gingrich is anybody’s guess. By all accounts, Adelson is as cranky and impervious to establishment advice as Newt. (And as right-wing idiosyncratic: The two greatest threats to Western civilization, he told The Wall Street Journal a couple of years back, were radical Islam and card-check for unions.) Together, these two crazy coots—Gingrich and Adelson—could prolong a contest that Romney wants to end yesterday. For now, it’s not his call.

For Gingrich, this is no longer about winning. Indeed, it probably never was. It may have begun as a cynical marketing campaign by Gingrich, more about making money and selling books than moving to Pennsylvania Avenue. Now it’s a grudge match, and Gingrich is content to lose so long as he can take Romney — and the GOP’s hopes for 2012 — down with him.

One of Mitt Romney’s strongest assets as the GOP presidential front-runner is also a potentially serious liability in the race: his heavy reliance on a small group of millionaires and billionaires for financial support.

A quarter of the money amassed by Romney’s campaign and an allied super PAC has come from just 41 people, each of whom has given more than $100,000, according to a Washington Post analysis of disclosure data. Nearly a dozen of the donors have contributed $1 million or more.

The preponderance of mega-rich supporters poses a political challenge for Romney, who has struggled for weeks over questions about his vast wealth, his history as a private equity manager and a series of gaffes that seemed to highlight his privileged station. He stumbled again on Wednesday when he told a CNN interviewer that he was “not concerned about the very poor, because they have a safety net.”

Some of Romney’s biggest supporters include executives at Bain Capital, his former firm; bankers at Goldman Sachs; and a hedge fund mogul who made billions betting on the housing crash. These and other donor details follow the release last week of Romney’s tax returns, which showed millions held in the Cayman Islands and other overseas havens and a tax rate that is far lower than that paid by most American workers.

In Romney’s case, it looks like the Citizens’ United ruling has had the effect of uniting the 1 percent behind one of their own, and their support for Romney’s primary campaign portends even greater investment a Romney victory in the general election, if betting on him in the primaries pays off.

One of the ironies of the first post-Citizens’-United is that the Republican primary race has given us our first glimpse of how the Supreme Court’s ruling might change not just our electoral process, but our democracy itself.

Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance expert at Colby College in Maine, says high-dollar donors have gotten active earlier than ever this year and are playing a bigger role — and that may not be an accident.

“If you think about the way the president is beginning to frame the campaign, presenting this as a campaign of the 99 percent against the 1 percent, that in some ways is adding fuel to the fire to keep these donors involved,” he said.

Corrado also noted that outside groups have had a disproportionate impact this year because so many candidates, including Gingrich, have lacked “presidential-level money.”

…In 2010, Senate Democrats twice came within one vote of passing a bill to require all groups engaging in political spending to reveal donors of $1,000 or more and to require top officers of outside groups, as well as their leading donors, to appear on camera in any television ads vouching their approval.

In winning the White House in 2008, Obama rode a tide of small donations as his campaign raised $662 million.

Corrado said that, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, “what we’re seeing in 2012 is a test of whether the development of broader financial participation in elections — the rise of small donors in elections — is going to continue to be encouraged, or if big money will once again become a central feature of the election.”

If Romney wins the nomination, he predicted that his shadow super PAC would play a leading role in the general election.

But it’s not just Romney. Both Mitt Romney’s and Newt Gingrich’s campaigns are spawns of Citizens’ United. Both also hint at the underlying danger in the Supreme Court ruling that makes it easier for a very small number of very wealthy citizens to buy a controlling interest in our democracy — in an eye toward achieving very specific outcomes. Romney’s Super PAC paid for his Florida onslaught against Newt, and successfully bought him that victory.

Want to know how Mitt Romney won Florida and why he’ll almost certainly be the GOP nominee? There’s an easy answer: a Super PAC and deep-pocketed donors.

According to the latest disclosure reports, the pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore Our Future, raised $30 million in 2011, 98 percent from donors who gave $25,000 or more. The PAC got $10 million from ten donors who gave a million bucks each, including from Houston Republican Bob Perry, the major funder behind the vile Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004.

Newt relied on just one donor to buy his win in South Carolina. But when Sheldon Adelson shelled out $5 million for Newt’s South Carolina victory, it was just as much a return on an old favor as it was an investment in future favors.

In its Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court upended our democratic elections by decreeing that corporations and über-wealthy individuals can dump unlimited sums of cash into campaigns to elect their favored candidates. Astonishingly, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared in his majority opinion that such a gusher of special-interest money would not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Who knew so much political naiveté could be cloaked in a single judicial robe?

Justice Kennedy, meet Sheldon Adelson — a product of your cluelessness about how real politics work. For years, this casino baron has spent lavishly on right-wing front groups to advance his personal agenda, including pouring money into Newt Gingrich’s campaign.

The billionaire and The Newt became symbiotic buddies in the mid-’90s, bonding over their shared fondness for crushing labor unions. Adelson was bitterly fighting Nevada unions, pushing a state law to crimp worker rights. Gingrich, then the House Speaker, endorsed Adelson’s Nevada legislation and also backed a tax break in Congress for casinos. In turn, Gingrich got campaign cash, funding to support him after being drummed out of office in disgrace in 1998, free rides on Adelson’s corporate jet, and backing for his present run for the presidency. In the past, the biggest personal check he could’ve taken from his casino sugar daddy was $5,000. After the Supreme’s Citizens United edict, however, Adelson can go all in to push his willing servant into the White House.

Gingrich can thank the Supreme Court for making it possible for his contributions from Adelson to increase one thousand times over — from $5,000 to $5 million. Likewise, Romney can thank the Court for allowing him to get by with even more help from his friends than he would have been allowed before.

The thing is, 1 percenters like Adelson and Romney’s buds from Bain don’t generally plunk down that kind of money without expecting something in return. Gamblers don’t make bets unless they expect to win something. And backers like Romney’s Bain Capital colleagues don’t make investments without expecting something in return. You don’t have to be a Supreme Court justice to expect that the payoff comes if their candidate wins, and promotes policies that the investors favor or that favor the investors.

So, what does the 1 percent want in return for its investment? What do the candidates have to promise them, explicitly or implicitly? How much policy does $1 million or $5 million buy? What does a controlling share in our democracy buy them? Sheldon Adelson’s interests seem to center on Middle East policy, but it’s likely Romney’s investors are looking for returns that his closer to home, closer to their bank accounts.

…The revelations come at a time when President Obama and other Democrats are increasing their focus on economic fairness issues ahead of the 2012 elections, including calls to increase tax rates on millionaires and close tax loopholes on investment income. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said at a news conference Wednesday that hedge-fund managers are helping Romney because he opposes higher tax rates for a type of investment income, known as “carried interest,” that primarily benefits the wealthy.

“Of course these guys are going to give a million dollars,” Franken said. “What a bargain — what a bargain to give that to a candidate who they know will veto a bill that makes the carried interest subject to the top” income tax rate.

…Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist who advises a pro-Obama group called Priorities USA, argues that Romney’s close connections to the super-rich exacerbate his problems relating to regular voters. Romney has generally fared poorly among lower-income voters in early GOP contests, particularly in his loss to Newt Gingrich in South Carolina on Jan. 21.

“He is of the rich, by the rich and for the rich,” Begala wrote in an e-mail. “He is Thurston Howell III: born rich and getting richer every day. . . . Mitt’s policies would definitely favor the over-privileged, and monarchs don’t start revolutions.”

There’s another side of the coin. Citizens United has united the 1 percent behind the candidates of the one percent. (Republicans, of course, now want to allow billionaires and corporations to contribute directly to campaigns.) It’s also uniting the 99 percent. a Montana Supreme Court decision recently paved the way for a challenge to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, and across the country support is building for an amendments to essentially repeal the ruling, and to end corporate personhood.

Like its name says, Citizens United has united citizens, alright — in battle that will determine the fate the nation. Democracy? Or Plutocracy? There’s still time to place your bets.

Update: One of those secret donors isn’t so secret anymore.

One of the mystery donors to the pro-Romney super PAC, contributing $250,000 in late July, was identified only as “Paumanok Partners LLC” in the most recent campaign finance reports, which were filed late Tuesday night. The report listed just a post office box for Paumanok in New Canaan, Conn.

The man who appears to be behind the donation, or at least closely linked to it, is William Laverack Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of Laverack Capital Partners, a private investment firm. He is also identified as a senior adviser to Tiger Infrastructure, a private equity firm that invests in businesses in sectors like power, waste and transportation, founded by Julian Robertson and Emil W. Henry in 2009. Mr. Robertson donated $1 million to Restore Our Future in November.

…The Times was able to trace the donation back to Mr. Laverack, essentially, through a nonworking Web site. Unable to find out anything about Paumanok, Matt Ericson, a graphics editor, decided to just plug in “Paumanok Partners” into a Web address, typing in paumanokpartners.com. That revealed a Web site that was under construction and did not show up in Google searches.

Which brings me back to Rick Santorum. It’s been a while since I posted another edition in this rather long series. I have so little time for non-work-related writing these days, that I seldom write about LGBT issues. (As a result, the hate crimes project is so embarrassingly out of date, that I’ve let the hosting account lapse, and probably won’t bring it back online because at this point I’ll never get it up to date.) Sometimes I question whether I can even be called a “gay blogger,” except as a blogger who happens to be gay, but rarely ever writes about gay issues (anymore).

Alas, between commuting to work, putting in eight hours, commuting back home, having family dinner, spending time with the kids between dinner and bedtime, helping Parker with his homework, putting the kids to bed, sharing the work of keeping the house relatively clean, and then finishing up the hour’s worth of work I bring home, there are just not enough hours in the day. And I’m usually to physically and mentally exhausted to do much of anything with what’s left of the 24 hours in question.

But that’s another post for another day.

It was my work-related blogging that alerted me to a remark Santorum made, comparing gay parents to felons, which inspired me to return to this series.

For the second time in as many days, Rick Santorum waded into the issue of gay marriage, suggesting it was so important for children to have both a father and mother that an imprisoned father was preferable to a same-sex parent.

Citing the work of one anti-poverty expert, Santorum said, “He found that even fathers in jail who had abandoned their kids were still better than no father at all to have in their children’s lives.”

Allowing gays to marry and raise children, Santorum said, amounts to “robbing children of something they need, they deserve, they have a right to. You may rationalize that that isn’t true, but in your own life and in your own heart, you know it’s true.”

At a private boarding school Friday, the Republican presidential candidate’s voice grew emotional as he argued that only a man and woman should be able to marry. “Marriage is not a right,” Santorum said. “It’s a privilege that is given to society by society for a reason…. We want to encourage what is the best for children.”

Well, thank you Rick Santorum, for making me a gay blogger again, if only for this post. I probably shouldn’t single out Santorum. After all, his fellow GOP presidential wannabes are not much better. Sure, Mitt Romney may have

Sure, Romney apparently supported gay rights in 2002, but he tried to disavow it in 2012. Sure, Log Cabin says Mitt Romney is “comfortable around gays,” But the $35,000 he donated to anti-marriage-equality groups in 2010 and 2011 suggests that he probably wouldn’t be comfortable attending their weddings. Factor in the $4.1 million he gave to the Mormon Church, and he probably funded more anti-gay activism than anyone knows. All of which suggests that the real question isn’t whether Romney is comfortable with gays, but how comfortable gays should be with Romney. (Answer: His pandering thus far suggests that, if elected, Romney is going to govern like a conservative. Last time I checked, that doesn’t include being friendly to gays, let along “comfortable around gays.”)

Then there’s Newt. Newt thinks that my marriage is a “temporary aberration,” kinda like his marriage vows. More recently he compared it to paganism. That dosen’t measure up to Santorum’s doomsday declarations.

Rick Santorum’s campaign slogan could very well be one word: doomsday.

To hear him tell it, the United States will collapse under the weight of its health care system and basic freedoms will be history. Iran will annihilate Israel and then South Carolina if Iran isn’t blocked from building a nuclear weapon. And divorce will yield higher taxes for all Americans.

Unless, of course, Republicans pick Santorum as the party’s presidential nominee and he goes on to defeat President Barack Obama.

… And on declining marriage rates, he adds: “Taxes go up and the economy struggles. We know that marriage and the two-parent family is the unit upon which this country was founded.“

Right. Except for my marriage and my two-parent family. Right?

Where to begin? On one hand, it’s almost too easy to rebut Santorum’s earlier statement. On the other hand, it’s probably been done already, considering that he made the remark at the beginning of the month, and I’m only just getting around to writing about it now. (See above.) But Santorum’s remark reminded me of what I’ve always said was the whole premise of this series.

As usual, I’m not saying these parents are representative of all heterosexual parents. They’re not. But when you make the generalization that heterosexuals are more fit parent by virtue of being heterosexual, and likewise “natural parents,” you’re including people like those in this post and this series. And at the same time you’re labeling gay and lesbian parents as unfit, even those most of our children never experience anything like the kids in this post or the kids in this series.

As long as people keep saying differently, though, I’ll keep writing these posts and hoping somebody gets it.

You’re effectively telling me that a lot of the kids in this series are better off than my kids, even if one or both of their parents are in jail for abusing them, because at least their parents are heterosexual. That’s effectively what Santorum was saying to three students in the audience who had gay parents.

He was effectively telling those kids that Sloan Briles’ seven year old son is better off than them, even though his father threw him off a boat for crying.

A Southern California man has been convicted of child endangerment for hitting his crying 7-year-old son and then throwing him off a tour boat in busy Newport Harbor, Orange County, the district attorney’s office said this week.

A court sentenced Sloan Briles to three years of formal probation, one year in a child abusers treatment program, and 180 days in a Veterans Administration residential treatment program, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. It added that prosecutors objected to the sentence, arguing that the defendant should be ordered to spend more time in jail.

…Briles, who’s divorced, was on the tour boat on a Sunday afternoon in August with his two sons, ages 6 and 7, when he got into an argument with his current girlfriend, sheriff’s office spokesman Jim Amormino said in August.

The boat, named the Queen, takes passengers past Newport Beach houses that are or were occupied by celebrities, including the home where the late John Wayne lived, Amormino said.

Briles’s 7-year-old son became upset about the argument and started crying, Amormino said.

The defendant was “under the influence of alcohol” at the time, according to the district attorney’s statement.

“The father took the boy to the bow of the boat and told him, ‘If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to throw you overboard,’ ” Amormino said.

“And he hits the kid a couple of times,” Amormino said. “The boy is crying. He picks him up and throws him overboard. They are in the middle of a harbor, and there is a lot of boat traffic.”

And Briles’ didn’t even get jail time. Sure, he threw his son off a boat and into the busy harbor where, the boat could have run over him or the propeller could have hit him, or any of the other boats could have hit him. But look, the kid was totally treading water, and anyway the captain threw him a life preserver. So, the kid was in much better shape than his dad, who had to jump into the water himself. Not to save his son, but to escape the other 85 angry passengers who’d witnessed that father-son moment.

So, the kid survived, and his dad — the one who threw him in to the water in the first place — didn’t even go to jail for it. This clearly heterosexual father, who was on the cruise with his girlfriend and his sons, would have been been a better parent than me and the hubby, or the parents of those three kids in the audience, even if he had gone to jail. Because he’s heterosexual.

Procreative imperative, folks. It don’t matter if you’re incarcerated as long as you ejaculated.

Assuming that Kaitlyn Campbell had her kids the old-fashioned way, her four-year-old-daughter is better off that the children of gay parents, even though telling a cop that “Mommy smokes weed all the time,” will probably get mommy some jail time.

After North Dakota cops pulled over a vehicle and recognized the strong odor of pot, the driver’s four-year-old daughter gave officers the lowdown on the ownership of drug paraphernalia found in the car.

“That’s mommy’s,” the girl said in reference to a glass marijuana pipe that police found in the auto’s back seat (where she was seated with her one-year-old brother). The child then added, “Mommy smokes weed all the time,” according to a Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Office report.

Kaitlyn Campbell, 20, was charged with felony child endangerment and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia in connection with the traffic stop last Thursday. A passenger in the 2007 Chevrolet Malibu was hit with the same charges (and a drug possession count after she claimed ownership of pot found in the car).

Mind you, I’m making some assumptions here. One of them is that Santorum places as much value on mothers as he does on fathers, even though his comments suggest that he’s got a bigger problem with lesbian parents than gay male parents. (Hey! Two fathers in the home! What’s not to love?)

Jessica Callaway’s 10-month-old may be even better off than Campbell’s daughter. Not only does mommy smoke weed all the time in this family, but mommy even shares some of the smoke with her daughter. Albeit, not before slapping her around and even then just to get her to shut up about her soiled diaper.

Gilbert police have accused a woman of blowing marijuana smoke directly into the mouth of her 10-month-old daughter to stop her from crying after she beat the infant.

Jessica Callaway, 21, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of child abuse after she was videotaped on her roommate’s cellphone hitting her baby a day earlier.

Police said the video shows the woman picking the baby up by her left leg and spanking her. When the infant continues to cry, Callaway screams at her to “shut the (expletive) up before I kick you in the mouth.”

Callaway then strikes the baby in the face with her open hand, police said. Police said no bruises were found on the infant’s leg or face.

Officers subsequently learned from Callaway’s roommate that she and Callaway had been smoking marijuana Friday night and that Callaway blew marijuana smoke into the baby’s mouth several times.

Some things just cannot be adequately described. There are few words that do justice to their ugliness. Thanks to Callaway’s friend, we can see for ourselves just how things went down.

Callway’s friend, Alexandra Kingsley, can be commended for quick thinking. She came forward later to say that she decided to record the events, despite her urge to intervene, because otherwise she would have no proof to offer police. So, she pretended to be texting on her phone, while she recorded Callaway’s parenting style for posterity, after observing it for two weeks.

Kingsley had compiled a long list of terrible things done to Laura in the last couple of weeks.

“She would leave the baby in dirty diapers until they were so heavy they were falling off her,” Kingsley said. “There’s times she yelled, ‘I wish I never had you, maybe I should just give you away, you’re such a mistake I hate you, you piece of….”

Kingsley said Callaway even blew marijuana smoke in the baby’s mouth and gave her medicine to make her sleep. So when Callaway was angry Friday night, Kingsley pretended to be texting on her phone when in reality she was recording.

You can hear Callaway yell at the baby, “You better shut up.” You can also hear the baby scream and get smacked on the leg and in the face.

“I showed my dad and called the cops,” Kingsley said.

Callaway reportedly said that she was “having a bad day” and was “having trouble finding an outfit to wear that night.” She was trying to get dressed to go out. According to the Daily Mail, Callaway posted about her “bad day” and need for a baby sitter on Facebook, where she regularly posted references about parties and drugs.

Did I miss the announcements about tryouts for “America’s Next Casey Anthony”? I’m willing to bet my next paycheck that this mom conceived her daughter the same way Casey Anthony did — passed out drunk after a night of partying.

If so, she still became a parent via the penis-in-vagina method, and thus automatically becomes a more fit parent than the hubby and I, even though neither of us smokes pot, or has seen the inside of a club in ten years, and our idea of “partying” is going to our kids’ classmates’ birthday party.

Compared to these two little girls, Brian and Shannon Gore’s daughter had the best of both worlds. The five-or-six-year old (?) had both mommy and daddy at home. Sure, they kept her in a cage, but at least she had both he biological parents at home.

Brian and Shannon Gore are awaiting trial for the attempted murder of the 5- or 6-year-old girl as well as murder, after police found the body of another child buried on their property a day after discovering the severely malnourished girl.

… The couple were arrested Thursday, when police knocking on doors during a robbery investigation stumbled upon the caged little girl, naked and covered in feces and bed sores.

Cops returned Friday and after searching a shack near the couple’s trailer home, unearthed the remains of a small child. Police have yet to confirm that child’s age, sex or cause of death.

Authorities are still awaiting the autopsy report in the child’s death, said commonwealth attorney Robert Hicks.

In addition to the caged girl, whose age police estimate at 5 or 6, police removed a healthy 2-month-old infant. Both children were placed in protective custody.

The caged girl, whom the Gores told police was only 2-years-old, was extremely malnourished and according to Brian Gore, 29, was fed a single Pop-Tart in the morning and another Pop-Tart or sandwich at night, said Maj. Darrell Warren of the Gloucester County Sheriff’s Office.

She was so hungry her bones were visible and she ate her own flaking dried skin, Warren confirmed.

The girl, according to her parents, was born at home, and had Down’s syndrome and cerebral palsy. They say she’d been in the case since last summer, and that they’d put her in the cage to keep her calm.

Beggars the imagination, doesn’t it?

Still, in just about every other aspect (besides that nasty bit about caging and starving their daughter) the Gore’s are an ideal family, as defined by conservatives.

• Heterosexual? Check!
• Married? Check!
• Two-parent home? Check!
• Children living with biological parents? Check!

And even if convicted of murder or attempted murder, which are both felonies, the Gore’s still beast us in the suitability-as-parents department. Santorum said so himself: better to have a felon for a parent, than to have two moms or two dads. Even if queer parents don’t cage and starve their kids, they don’t meet the above criteria.

Our children have never seen the inside of a cage, because we tend not t shop for them at PetSmart. The closest they came to that was the crib they both slept in as infants, and that we got rid of after Dylan outgrew it. But we still don’t hold a candle to Brian and Shannon Gore as parents.

LIkewise James Tapke, who bound his 13-year-old daughter with duct tape and locked her in a cage.

Authorities have released the details of a case involving a man who they said punished his daughter using duct tape.

The Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Office said James Tapke restrained his 12-year-old daughter’s hands and feet using a duct tape before placing her in a dog cage on Jan. 10. Then, while his daughter was in the cage, investigators said, Tapke dropped small amounts of water on her face.

According to court papers, the victim was in the cage for about 20 minutes before her 13-year-old brother let her out. When she got out, authorities said the victim poured water on her father’s head and in his ear.

Tapke then bound his daughter again with duct tape and put her back in the dog cage, investigators said, and while she was in the cage, Tapke told his son to go to the garage and retrieve the electrical jump pack so that he could electrify the cage. The girl’s brother brought the jump pack and sat in front of the cage, so his sister could see it.

Tapke never attempted to electrify the cage, but investigators said he told his daughter several times he should.

The daughter was rescued when her brother posted pictures of her in the cage on Facebook. But it turns out that the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. According to Tapke, he was only joking when he threatened to electrify the cage. (Somewhere, Herman Cain is feeling vindicated right about now.)

Somehow, in all the books I’ve read about parenting, I missed the chapter about the role of cages, dog crates, and storage containers as essential parenting tools. Apparently, the Gores and Tapke read that chapter very carefully. So did Riley Choate and his wife Kimberly Kubina.

A former official at Indiana Child Protective Services is admitting some culpability in the death of a 13 year old boy that was allegedly kept in a dog cage and beaten to death.

The body of Christian Choate was found earlier in May in a shallow grave beneath a concrete slab near his former home in Gary, Indiana. Police believe Christian died in April, 2009.

Christian’s father, Riley Lowell Choate, 39, and his stepmother, Kimberly Leona Kubina, 45, have been charged with murder, battery, neglect of a dependent and criminal confinement. Neighbors reportedly told police that they witnessed Choate slap Christian, and the boy’s beatings grew in severity as Choate and Kubina increasingly had problems in their marriage and Choate would take it out on Christian, according to court records.

Police allege that the last few years of Christian’s life were spent mostly locked up either in a room in the basement or in a dog cage that Choate had purchased from a neighbor. When not in the cage, the couple forced Christian’s 17-year-old sister to chain him up and be responsible for his care, and she told police that if she didn’t do as she was told Choate would abuse her as well.

Look at their faces. They’re like two sides of the same sadistic coin. Imagine being a child, looking into those faces, and being utterly at their mercy. He is utterly impassive, unmoved by your cried or pleas for him to stop, and just waiting for you to finish so that he can give you some more. She wears a sardonic smirk, that suggests she is either enjoying your pain, or surprising a chuckle over the latest torture she’s thought up for you. They’re not going to stop.

The story is bad enough. But it gets more heartbreaking than that. First, it turned out more than a dozen people — family, neighbors, etc. — knew about the abuse Christian suffered. At least 13 of them reported it to authorities. (At least one of them, his sister Christina, can be excused. When she found her brother dead, the morning after his last beating, her father said to her, “If you say anything, I swear to God, I’ll kill you and I’ll bury you with your brother.” She had little reason to doubt that daddy was as good as his word on that matter.)

One neighbor called authorities twice, over suspected abuse in the Choate home, after her husband “witnessed Christian cowering in a corner while Choate screamed at him.” The neighbor said that someone she assumed to be a state social worker visited the Choates after each of her calls, and later reports showed that child welfare services had been in touch with the Choates, and even placed some of the children in foster care. But Christian was overlooked.

Wait. It gets worse than that. Christian left his own account of his treatment.

The almost unbearable part of the reports released by the court late last month is an account of letters that investigators say Christian had written while in the cage. While other children in the family were outside playing, he allegedly was told to write his thoughts down. The records indicate that his stepmother, in ordering him to do this, seemed especially sadistic; the topics she assigned him included “Why do you still want to see your mom?” and “Why can’t you let the past go?”

Here, according to the court-released documents, is some of what Christian wrote about:

• “Christian often stated he was hungry or thirsty.”
• “Christian wrote of why nobody liked him and how he just wanted to be liked by his family.”
• “Christian stated that he wanted to die because nobody liked the way he ‘acted.’ “
• “Christian wrote of how many times he had to steal food or use the bathroom in his place of confinement.”
• “Christian wrote of how he was ‘let out’ to clean or vacuum but then had to go back to his ‘place’ (the dog cage) immediately afterwards.”
• “Christian wrote of how he had nothing to do and if he asked for something to do he was given a piece of paper and a pencil.”
• “Christian wrote of how everybody else was outside playing but he was not.”

The report concluded: “The writings go on and on of how isolated and sad Christian was on a daily basis.”

In perhaps the most haunting sentence in the report, investigators said:

A child who is beaten and caged is likely to be terrified of his so-called guardians; if a caseworker comes into the home, the child likely knows that if he says the wrong thing, he will face more brutality when the caseworker leaves and he is alone to face his tormentors once again.

Christian prayed for release, and time and time again watched people who could have rescued him come and go. It must have occurred to him at some point that he didn’t have a prayer. When release came, it was delivered by his father’s fists.

Christian would meet his death in April 2009, when he refused to eat. Sister Christina says this prompted her dad to punch him multiple times in the head, then toss him back in his cage. These were the blows that apparently killed him.

One crucial detail is missing here. What did Christian refuse to eat? Given the abuse his father and step-mother dished out to him, I can’t help but assume that it probably extended to what they fed him as well. I mean, what’s the fun in beating and starving someone if you’re going to turn around and give them something appetizing or even nutritious to eat? My mind is not twisted enough to imagine what they might have given him to eat, half-hoping he’d refuse and give them an excuse to have some more fun.

Christina would find Christian the next day, dead after having suffered (according to a coroner) blunt trauma, internal bleeding, and a skull fracture. The step-monster told Christina to give her brother CPR, but he was well past saving by then. Dad and step-monster wrapped him in garbage bags, and threw him in the back of their van, making Christina help move the body.

Christian was buried behind their trailer, under a concrete slab. He might have stayed there, except that Christina told her (and Christian’s) biological mom that Christian was dead. Bio-mom called 911. The police visited Riley Choate, and he apparently led them to Christian’s grave.

The buried him, surrounded by garbage bags and lime. His parents had placed a Bible on his chest.

The whole thing started, according to some reports, when Christian was allegedly molested by a male relative. Somehow, this was Choate’s cue to start beating and abusing his son. The abuse took place against the backdrop of the deteriorating marriage of between Christians dad and biological mother. (Choate reportedly also abused his first wife.) The marriage ended in divorce, and somehow Choate — the abusive parent — got custody of the children. That’s perplexing, and makes me wonder why the mother didn’t get custody. Did she not want custody? Or were there reasons why she could not get custody of the children?

Either way, two years later Christian’s dead.

Here again is a family that meets the basic requirements. One man, one woman. Heterosexual. Married. Father in the home.

It’s easy to see where families like mine fall short. I mean, the worst we do to our kids is put them in “time-out,” to give them and/or us a few minutes to cool down. Riley Choate and Kimberly Kubina make us look downright lenient.

Next we go to Nebraska, where four adults — Lacy J. Beyer, Ashly A. Clark, Bryson L. Eyten, and Samantha J. Eyeten (note that the last two are Mr. and Mrs.) — kept four children in cages.

The suspects were identified as Lacy J. Beyer, 20; Ashly A. Clark, 22; Bryson L. Eyten, 25; Samantha J. Eyten, 24.

Four suspects accused of keeping children in a cage in a dirty trailer home in Nebraska attended a court hearing Thursday after being charged with felony child abuse, first degree false imprisonment and misdemeanor child abuse, officials said.

The suspects were identified by police as Bryson L. Eyten, 25; Samantha J. Eyten, 24; Ashly A. Clark, 22; and Lacy J. Beyer, 20.

The four children were removed from the home and placed in state custody, police said. The Eytens are the parents of the two boys, said North Platte Police Lt. Rich Hoaglund. Clark is the mother of the two girls.

…”Upon arrival and subsequent entrance into the residence, the officers found the residence highly unsanitary and unsafe for children,” Hoaglund said in a statement. “There was trash, dirty clothing, food and animal feces and urine throughout the residence.”

Two young children, ages 5 and 3, were found in the metal kennel, which was secured by a wire tie, Hoaglund said. The cage reportedly had a mattress.

Two other children, ages 8 years and 8 months, were not in the kennel but were considered to be in unsafe conditions.

OK, so only two of them were caged. The other two were free range. Clark says her two slept in the cage because she was afraid they might climb out of the window. So, she was either trying to keep them safe or prevent their escape. In either case, that might have been accomplished by locking the window.

Now, at least two of the children were were living with both their biological parents. Bryson and Samantha Eyten were the parents of the two boys. Ashley Clark is the mother of the two girls, and nobody knows what relation Beyer has to anybody, but her Facebook relationship status says “It’s complicated.” So it’s anybody’s guess. (However, it seems to indicate that Samantha Eyten is her sister. So I’m nos sure what’s “complicated,” unless…)

Again, the Eytens at least meet the bare minimum qualifications to be suitable parents: heterosexual, married, father-in-the-home, etc. There’s some question about their living arrangements. Shacking up with Beyer, if she’s Samantha’s sister could just be helping out family. That leaves Clark, the apparently unwed mother. Wait! Maybe they were supposed to be a good influence and good example for her!  Some questions remain about how that worked out. I do wonder how they explained to their 8-year-old why two of the other kids slept in a cage.

John and Sonja Kluth’s children were better off, too, I suppose. The Kluths apparently could not have children of their own. No shame in that. As a heterosexual, married  couple they were still better candidates for parenthood than the hubby and me, almost by default. So, they adopted three children, kept them in cages and fed them dog food.

The Canadian County District Attorney has filed child abuse and child neglect charges against two Oklahoma parents accused of beating their three adopted children and feeding them pet food.

John and Sonja Kluth are each facing three counts of child abuse and three counts of child neglect for allegedly abusing their adopted 15-year-old and 11-year-old sons and 9-year-old daughter, reports CBS affiliate KWTV.

“They’ve been abused just about every way imaginable, they’ve been burned, cut, beat,” Canadian County Sheriff Randall Edwards told KWTV.

The couple was arrested Tuesday, but reportedly bonded out of jail later the same day.

I can understand how two-parent families like this help keep us avoid doomsday. I can also see how they children might pray for the end of the world and their misery along with it — between beatings and hunger pangs, that is.

 According to the affidavit, the children were not allowed to ask for food or tell their adoptive parents that they were hungry. If they did, the documents said, they were punished. The affidavit said the punishment could include beatings, sleeping in a 14-square-foot cellar, deprivation of food or running laps.

The district attorney said in the charges that Sonja and John Kluth would beat the children. Sonja Kluth would beat the children with the buckle ends of belts and broom handles until they lost consciousness, burned the 15-year-old boy’s tongue and skin with scalding hot kitchen utensils, squeezed the teen’s tongue and genitals with pliers, smashed the teen’s fingers and toes with a mallet and struck him in the face with various objects, including a dog bowl, the district attorney said.

The charges filed against Sonja Kluth said that she choked the children with her hands and beat them with her fists.

…The court documents said the girl was beaten and thrown to the ground and into countertops and doors by the Kluths. During one of the incidents, documents said, the girl’s earring was ripped from her ear, and was struck in the face with a telephone that broke a tooth.According to the affidavit, the teen boy told police the the Kluths would “get together sometimes and ‘slide throw’ them across the carpet and that they would get carpet burns.

…In one incident, police said, Sonja Kluth was smashing one of the children’s fingers with a mallet she said, “Get back up here. You know I want blood.”According to the court affidavit, doctors said that the teen’s bone growth was significantly delayed due to the malnourishment the children received. The doctors also noted the teen suffered from a broken hand, the documents said.

(There’s a YouTube video here that includes some of the 15-year-old’s account. It’s unembedable, so you’ll have to click through to watch it. The abuse stopped when the 15-year-old ran away from home one night — in 26-degree weather, without a coat — and was discovered sleeping behind a store.)

According to a CNN article, the Kluths confessed to some of the allegations, and Sonja claimed that she lost control of the children and became a “monster.” If even half of  the above is true, I’d say that’s an understatement. I can’t think which allegations above the Kluths could admit to and not come out looking like monsters.

That goes for John, too. another report says that Sonja was the most active abuser, while her husband just stood by and watched. The bystander effect is not excuse, in my book. Only, he wasn’t just a bystander. He approved. One report quotes him saying as much.

John Kluth told police in the affidavit that “kids need walls and there is a wall of discipline in the home,” the affidavit said.

Maybe this is where we went wrong. As most, we might send out kids to their rooms, to give them some time to calm down. But we never considered that “walls” might include cage walls too!

But, again, the Klluths meeting the minimum standard: heterosexual, married, father in home, etc. All they have to do is stop keeping their kids in cages (along with burning, and beating them, etc.) and they’d stand head and shoulders over us as parents. On the other hand, even without doing any of that, we couldn’t still measure up as parents.

The Kluths might be in the same boat as us, in terms of not being able to have their own biological children, but that’s where the magic comes in. So long as the penis goes into the vagina, they at least achieve the symbolic potential for procreation..

Of course, no one would dream of telling infertile heterosexuals they can’t marry simply because they can’t reproduce. I guess just possessing the proper plumbing is enough to qualify, even if it doesn’t quite function. They might technically be considered handicapped, as they are biologically and anatomically unable to fulfill that primary purpose of marriage, and we can’t discriminate against the handicapped here.

Plus, and I’ve actually had this argument presented to me, their particular combination of genitalia represents at least a symbolic potential for procreation, and that’s enough. And don’t forget (I’ve heard this one too) that “God” might miraculously cure the barrenness. Then wouldn’t we feel foolish for not letting them get married? The same would apply to elderly heterosexuals who are past their reproductive years, but want to marry.

Even heterosexuals who choose not to have children can make the cut. Again, there’s the argument for symbolic potential due to the required combination of genitals, etc. There’s also the possibility that they might “accidentally” reproduce, whether they want to or not, and thus fulfill that primary purpose of marriage. The New York Supreme Court actually applied that logic when it ruled that since heterosexual couples tend towards “reckless procreation”, while gay parents actually become parents through very deliberate efforts (IVF, adoption), they’re actually less stable and thus require protections that our families don’t need.

The Kluth’s got busted when their kid busted out of the jail they created for him. Kayla and Frankie Almuina got busted when they posted pictures of their children on Facebook. Oh yeah. The kids were bound with duct tape.

Two northern Arizona parents were arrested after photos of their young children allegedly being abused were posted on Facebook.

An anonymous Facebook user reportedly alerted authorities on Wednesday after seeing two children, an infant and a toddler, bound with duct tape around their wrists and ankles in photos posted to the social networking site, Fox affiliate KSAZ-TV reported.

The children’s mouths were taped shut, and one of them was hung upside down by some exercise equipment, according to the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office in Flagstaff.

…The anonymous caller knew the names of the parents and where they lived, Reuters reported. Deputies arrested Frankie Almuina, 20, and Kayla Almuina, 19, at their Williams, Ariz., home on Thursday and charged them with two counts of child abuse.

Now, the Almuinas say they were “only joking,” so they apparently practice the same parenting philosophy as Jim Tapske (see above). But like the rest of the families above, they qualify as better suited for parenthood than we do, even though we’ve never put duct tape on our kids. Not even as a “joke.”

It just parents who become felons by treating their kids like felons, and putting them on lock-down. Some parents take their kids with them to commit felonies. Like Matthew Wolski.

A 22-year-old Spring man was facing charges Monday after investigators said he took his 3-year-old child with him on a shoplifting trip to Walmart.

Matthew James Wolski is charged with child endangerment.

According to court documents, Wolski walked into a Walmart in the 1300 block of Fry Road on January 16, 2012, pushing a cart with the child inside.

Investigators said Wolski put several items in his cart and then walked past the registers without paying.

Three loss-prevention officers stopped Wolski in the parking lot and escorted him back to the Loss Prevention Office, court documents said.

One of the officers was holding Wolski’s arm, while the other two pushed the cart with the child in it.

But once they got back to the office, investigators said Wolski broke free from the officers, grabbed the child and ran out to his silver, late-model Impala.

Investigators said Wolski threw the kid in the back of the car without restraining him in a child-safety seat and sped away from the scene.

Talk about quality time with daddy! We can only hope the kid wasn’t with him when he was arrested for fondling himself at Walmart last October.

I suppose I should cut Wolski some slack. After all, at least he didn’t leave the kid in the car. And at least he took the kid with him when he fled. the scene. Besides, I think it’s possible he’s not too bright. He was caught the next day, when police answered a call about a home invasion. Wolski was one of the witnesses. Maybe he even placed the call. This guy has problems. Seriously. Google his name.

I could go on. But the point here isn’t to dump on or put all heterosexual parents in the same boat aor paint them with the same brush as those above. it’s the same one I’ve explained before.

It’s inevitable that, since the poisonous parenting series started, someone who drops into the the middle of it without reading the previous posts (or perhaps without reading any of it) completely misunderstands the point of it. That’s what seems to have happened with one commenter on the previous post.

I am a black hetrosexual woman who reads your blog often. It is really bothersome that you choose to highlight the worst of the worst of hetrosexual parenting. How can we have meaningful dialogue about our differing views when all you do is degrade and mock hetrosexual parents?????

Of course, the point is not to “degrade and mock heterosexual parents.”

In truth, the series had its unofficial beginning in a couple of posts written in response to right wing pundits who called the very act of being a gay parent “abusive” and “selfish.” I’d read several stories in the news about what abusive parents had done to their children, and what neglectful parents had allowed to happen to their children. The parents in these stories were heterosexual, and it occurred to me that the people who called gay parenting itself “abusive” and “selfish” where essentially placing my family and other gay parents in the same category as clearly abusive parents who happen to be heterosexuals.

Like I said earlier, it’s been a long time since I posted another edition in this series. I never considered it officially “closed.” I just moved on to other things, thinking I’d clearly made my point. I didn’t think I’d necessarily have to repeat it. But some things bear repeating.

And, sadly, there’s no shortage of stories like those above to help make that point.

In fact, Newt’s accomplishing his own destruction just by his dogged determination to stay in the race all the way to convention, and he’s threatening to take his party down with him.

First, there’s the obvious. The longer Newt stays in the race, the more opportunities he gives his opponents to not only attack him with a viciousness they usually reserve for Democrats, but to do so while telling nothing but the truth. And when it comes to Newt Gingrich the truth hurts.

Gingrich may take some comfort in NBC’s request that the Romney campaign pull this anti-Gingrich attack at that featured Tom Brokaw.

That one ran three times in one half hour. still leaves four Romney ads running in Florida, and none for Gingrich. That might have something to do with the Romney campaign’s assertion that Newt “doesn’t have the right to rewrite history.”

Or, it could that Newt can’t rewrite history because Romney’s attacks on his ethics violations are the opposite of “totally phony.”

“… fined $300,000 for ethics violations”

One Romney attack ad said that Gingrich was “fined $300,000 for ethics violations.” That’s because he was.

The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the first time in the House’s 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing.

The ethics case and its resolution leave Gingrich with little leeway for future personal controversies, House Republicans said. Exactly one month before yesterday’s vote, Gingrich admitted that he brought discredit to the House and broke its rules by failing to ensure that financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving the House ethics committee false information.

“Newt has done some things that have embarrassed House Republicans and embarrassed the House,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.). “If [the voters] see more of that, they will question our judgment.”

House Democrats are likely to continue to press other ethics charges against Gingrich and the Internal Revenue Service is looking into matters related to the case that came to an end yesterday.

The 395 to 28 vote closes a tumultuous chapter that began Sept. 7, 1994, when former representative Ben Jones (D-Ga.), then running against Gingrich, filed an ethics complaint against the then-GOP whip. The complaint took on greater significance when the Republicans took control of the House for the first time in four decades, propelling Gingrich into the speaker’s chair.

(Washington Post, Wednesday, January 22 1997)

Maybe Newt can’t rewrite history, because when Romney says Newt worked for Freddie Mac and profited from his “insider” status, it’s because it’s true.

“…took $1.6 million from Freddie Mac”

The same Romney ad said that Gingrich took $1.6 million from Freddie Mac. That’s because he did.

Newt Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.

The total amount is significantly larger than the $300,000 payment from Freddie Mac that Gingrich was asked about during a Republican presidential debate on Nov. 9 sponsored by CNBC, and more than was disclosed in the middle of congressional investigations into the housing industry collapse.

Gingrichs business relationship with Freddie Mac spanned a period of eight years. When asked at the debate what he did to earn a $300,000 payment in 2006, the former speaker said he offered them advice on precisely what they didnt do, and warned the company that its lending practices were insane. Former Freddie Mac executives who worked with Gingrich dispute that account.

And I’m not going to get into the messy details of Newt’s personal life. Another Romney has done that already.

Mitt Romney’s oldest son, Tagg Romney, wrote on his Twitter feed Sunday afternoon: “This is my favorite video of the campaign so far.”

He added the hashtag #AnnRomney4FirstLady.

The link that Tagg provided sent users to a website independent of the Romney campaign, titled AmericaNeedsMitt.com. It was a video called “Judge a Man by the Woman.”

It features photos of Mitt and Ann Romney set to music.

But in the text of the website, under the headline, “You Can Judge Mitt By His Woman — Ann Romney,” there is a paragraph of text at which Tagg Romney may not have looked closely enough. The text is largely harmless until the last line, when it makes an obvious comparison of Ann Romney to Callista Gingrich, Newt Gingrich’s third wife after extramarital affairs broke up his first two marriages.

“Do we want, as our First Lady, a woman who raised five wonderful and successful sons, is grandmother to 16 beautiful grand kids, and has always been a paragon of virtue? Or do we want ‘the other woman?’” the site reads.

The site is run by Mike Sage, of Wichita Falls, Texas, who lists himself on his Facebook page as an “author, editor, publisher, graphics designer, marketing consultant, broadcaster, conservative political activist, stock market trader, and a big Mitt Romney fan.”

Oh, I think someone’s giving the Romney’s a bit too much of the benefit of the doubt. Whether anybody on the Romney campaign read that paragraph closely or not, I’m willing to bet the Romney campaign is betting that a lot of Florida’s Republican primary voters will read it, or will get the point even if they don’t read it.

LUTZ, Fla. — Newt and Callista Gingrich walked into the massive Idlewild Baptist Church here Sunday morning and sat in the third row of pews to hear a sermon that touched at points on themes central to Gingrich’s biography: personal mistakes, betrayal of one’s closest relations, and a search for forgiveness.

“There are some of you in this room, I would venture to guess, who have ripped apart families,” said the preacher, Russell Moore, the dean of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Moore’s message — focused on the sanctity of human life — was one of forgiveness and the grace of God.

Gingrich, the former House speaker from Georgia, has said he has gone to God over his two adulterous relationships and three marriages.

Moore’s sermon touched on the idea that in the midst of “gory, awful, gritty reality,” there can still be “beauty and redemption and hope.”

But it appeared Sunday that if Gingrich’s past held the seeds of a future of redemption, it was not political — at least not in Florida. A new telephone survey released Saturday night of 800 registered Florida voters, conducted by MasonDixon Polling & Research from Jan. 24 to 26, indicated that the impact of Gingrich’s past on his political fortunes was hurting him severely.

“Gingrich and Romney are essentially tied among men, but Romney has a 19-point lead over Gingrich among women. Gingrich’s cocky persona, combined with his three marriages and record of infidelity, help account for that gender gap,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote.

That 19-point gap is key to Gingrich’s flagging fortunes in Florida, where he has fallen behind Romney by an average of more than a dozen points, just in the matter of the last few days.

That explains why Newt’s own campaign practically runs in self-destruct mode. What makes the GOP establishment nervous isn’t Newt’s self-destruction, but the mutually assured destruction that remains a threat as long as Newt remains a candidate.

Ultimately, Newt’s problem is just being Newt. It always has been, because the real Newt bears a strong resemblance the one portrayed in his opponents attack ads.

Even before the South Carolina primary, fellow Republicans who remembered his erratic rule as Speaker started poking holes in Newt’s hot air balloon. After South Carolina, Newt’s surge brought even more big name Republicans off the bench. Bob Dole, in a statement published in the National Review, said that “Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall,” and recalled Newt’s spectacular fall to earth from his speakership.

Gingrich served as Speaker from 1995 to 1999 and had trouble within his own party. By 1997 a number of House Republican members wanted to throw him out as Speaker. But he hung on until after the 1998 elections when Newt could read the writing on the wall. His mounting ethics problems caused him to resign in early 1999. I know whereof I speak as I helped establish a line of credit of $150,000 to help Newt pay off the fine for his ethics violations. In the end, he paid the fine with money from other sources.

Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall. He loved picking a fight with President Clinton because he knew this would get the attention of the press. This and a myriad of other specifics like shutting down the government helped to topple Gingrich in 1998.

Come to think of it, not only does Newt’s latest big idea have a distinctly “off the wall” quality that suggests he can’t have thought it through, but it may not even be his idea. Not originally, anyway.

David Frum highlights a Newt takedown from Ann Coulter.

Politico rounds up the sudden right-of-center media drop on Gingrich, including this line from Ann Coulter:

“Hotheaded arrogance is neither conservative nor attractive to voters.”

When Ann Coulter is criticizing you for “hotheaded arrogance,” it’s like Rosie O’Donnell recommending anger management. Ot’s pretty much over.

As David Frum notes in the post quoted above, it’s pretty much true. it’s been true for all these years. Like I said earlier, when it come to Newt, the truth hurts. And not just the truth about Newt. Whatever secret cache of documents Nancy Pelosi may or may not have notwithstanding, we all pretty much know the truth about Newt. Like I said earlier, what’s making conservatives nervous is the truth about Newt just reveals the truth about Repbulicans.

When not holding forth from his favorite table at L’Auberge Chez François, nestled among the manor houses of lobbyist-thick Great Falls, Va., Dr. Newton L. Gingrich likes to lecture people about food stamps and how out-of-touch the elites are with real America.

Gingrich, as he showed in a gasping effort in Thursday night’s debate in Florida, is a demagogue distilled, like a French sauce, to the purest essence of the word’s meaning. He has no shame. He thinks the rules do not apply to him. And he turns questions about his odious personal behavior into mock outrage over the audacity of the questioner.

After inventing, and then perfecting, the modern politics of personal destruction, Gingrich has decided now to bank on the dark fears of the worst element of the Republican base to seize the nomination — using skills refined over four decades.

Not all the news is necessarily bad for Newt. He’s garnered support from Republicans share some of his troublesome traits. Former Rep. Randy Cunningham endorsed Newt from prison, where he’s serving a 100 month sentence after being convicted in one of the largest congressional corruption cases ever. Unfortunately, Cunningham noted, the endorsement would probably do Newt more harm than good. On the upside, he added that Newt would have about 80% of the incarcerated felon vote locked down — if they could vote.

If Cunningham’s endorsement isn’t enough good news, fellow bomb-thrower Sarah “Blood Libel” Palin came to Newt’s defense, accusing the media of attempting to “crucify” Newt.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin continued to stand up for Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Thursday, saying that the recent character assault launched by conservatives against him was a case of the establishment trying to “crucify” the former House speaker.

“Look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him via the establishment’s attacks. They’re trying to crucify this man and rewrite history and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years,” Palin told Fox Business Network’s John Stossel after weighing on Ron Paul’s candidacy. “So it’s not just Ron Paul. I believe it’s also Newt Gingrich, that the establishment, that the liberal media, certainly that the progressives and the Democrats don’t like.”

It sounds like the former governor is as blind to reality as the former speaker. It’s not the “liberal media” or “establishment,” that’s worried about Newt getting the Republican nomination. In fact, some progressives are almost giddy about the possibility of President Obama running against Newt. (Robert Reich makes a good case for why no responsible progressive or Democrat should wish for Gingrich to top the GOP ticket.)

It’s Republicans who are scared to death about that possibility. They know Newt very well, that’s why they can attack him wielding only the truth. They know that nobody has to destroy Newt, because given enough time Newt will self destruct. They just don’t want him to take the party down with him, when he implodes. If Republicans sought to speed up that implosion, to get it out of the way, it’s starting to look like they’re succeeding.

Just please give your car keys to someone who’s not playing this drinking game. According to the rules, you’ll be taking a shot every time the candidates attack each other, because every time they attack each other they get each other exactly right.

Case in point, the squabble between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich at the most recent debate in Tampa, FL. — which, as others have noted, amounted to a cage match between two rich guys.

Maybe some Republican voters are still interested in hearing how Newt will “bloody Obama’s nose” in a general election, but the rest of us are noticing how many punches these guys are landing on each other.

Romney hit Newt hard about his paycheck from Freddie Mac.

Romney hammered Gingrich hard on some financial information Gingrich released Monday: his contract with Freddie Mac. While Gingrich insists he didnt lobby, Romney noted that his newly released contract showed he was hired by the firms chief lobbyist. We have congressmen who say you lobbied them, he told his rival. I didn’t lobby them, Gingrich shot back, his voice getting high and whiny the way it did when that Iowa voter told him he was a disgrace to his party last spring. At one point he fell awkwardly silent. You can call it whatever you like, I call it influence peddling, Romney concluded. Score that round for the wealthy former frontrunner.

That one probably stung Newt a little, because it’s true.

“…took $1.6 million from Freddie Mac”

The same Romney ad said that Gingrich took $1.6 million from Freddie Mac. That’s because he did.

Newt Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.

The total amount is significantly larger than the $300,000 payment from Freddie Mac that Gingrich was asked about during a Republican presidential debate on Nov. 9 sponsored by CNBC, and more than was disclosed in the middle of congressional investigations into the housing industry collapse.

Gingrich’s business relationship with Freddie Mac spanned a period of eight years. When asked at the debate what he did to earn a $300,000 payment in 2006, the former speaker said he offered them advice on precisely what they didn’t do, and warned the company that its lending practices were insane. Former Freddie Mac executives who worked with Gingrich dispute that account.

Don’t take Romney’s word for it. Andy Kroll has Newt’s Freddie Mac contract. Read it for yourself.

It’s hard to blame Gingrich for squalling, but he actually started pouting before Romney landed that punch. Because first the Mad Doctor tag-teamed with the Mitt-enator on Newt’s turn as Speaker.

But he failed. Presidents dont pout. A sulky Gingrich complained the GOP campaign had become unnecessarily personal and nasty, and that’s sad. Gingrich objecting to personal and nasty is as believable as Romney pretending he does his own laundry. That’s really sad. But Romney had the better night, hitting Gingrich early and often for having to resign the House speakership in disgrace due to ethics charges. And when Gingrich tried to claim he left his leadership post voluntarily, Ron Paul double-teamed him with Romney. He didn’t have the votes, that was what the problem was, Gingrich’s former House colleague told the crowd.

Right out of the gate, Newt got body-slammed by the truth in the first round.

“… fined $300,000 for ethics violations”

One Romney attack ad said that Gingrich was “fined $300,000 for ethics violations.” That’s because he was.

The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the first time in the House’s 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing.

The ethics case and its resolution leave Gingrich with little leeway for future personal controversies, House Republicans said. Exactly one month before yesterday’s vote, Gingrich admitted that he brought discredit to the House and broke its rules by failing to ensure that financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving the House ethics committee false information.

“Newt has done some things that have embarrassed House Republicans and embarrassed the House,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.). “If [the voters] see more of that, they will question our judgment.”

House Democrats are likely to continue to press other ethics charges against Gingrich and the Internal Revenue Service is looking into matters related to the case that came to an end yesterday.

The 395 to 28 vote closes a tumultuous chapter that began Sept. 7, 1994, when former representative Ben Jones (D-Ga.), then running against Gingrich, filed an ethics complaint against the then-GOP whip. The complaint took on greater significance when the Republicans took control of the House for the first time in four decades, propelling Gingrich into the speaker’s chair.

(Washington Post, Wednesday, January 22 1997)

That’s not to say that Romney emerged unbloodied. Desperate, without the roar of the crowd to make him look like a good debater, Newt resorted to his signature move: hitting Romney below the money-belt.

Cornered, Gingrich pivoted to an attack on Romney s background as a vulture capitalist: Whats the gross revenue of Bain during the years you were working for them?

When that didn’t quite fly, Gingrich went all college professor on Romney. Recalling the negatives Romney peddled in his failed 2008 run for the nomination, the former Speaker said: I understand your technique, which you used on McCain, you used on Huckabee. Its unfortunate and its not going to work very well, because the American people see through it.

Newt didn’t exhibit the form that made him the winner in South Carolina, but he sort of landed a punch with that one. Returns in both New Hampshire and South Carolina show American are seeing through something, but it’s not much Romney’s attacks on Newt. It’s Romney’s annointing of himself as an exemplar of free enterprise.

The problem is, “free enterprise” is not on trial, and Bain isn’t so much the representative of capitalism as the Frankenstein monster of capitalism stitched together and brought to life by conservative policy.

As a former manager at Bain made plain in an LA Time interview, job creation was never the mission at Bain Capital. So, there’s very little evidence to support Romney’s claim of creating 100,000 jobs at Bain. Bain won’t release its overall record of jobs lost or created. Probably because it wasn’t anybody’s job to create jobs at Bain. Ask them about how much they returned to investors they can probably do that. Creating wealth was the job at Bain, not creating jobs. And we’ve already had a decade of the Bush tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, the rich getting richer, and zero job growth to teach us that creating wealth doesn’t necessarily lead to job creation.

Warren Buffet, in a Time Magazine interview, made clear another reason why Romney couldn’t follow Palin’s advice if he wanted to.

When I ask whether Mitt Romney is a job creator or destroyer, Buffett says that while businesses shouldn’t keep people they don’t need, “I don’t like what private-equity firms do in terms of taking out every dime they can and leveraging [companies] up so that they really aren’t equipped, in some cases, for the future.”

Even without a release from Bain, we what we know about one of Bain’s acquisitions in which Romney was a very hands-on manager is exactly what Buffet described.

But an examination of the Dade deal, which Mr. Romney approved and presided over, shows the unintended human costs and messy financial consequences behind the brand of capitalism that he practiced for 15 years.

At Bain Capitals direction, Dade quadrupled the money it owed creditors and vendors. It took steps that propelled the business toward bankruptcy. And in waves of layoffs, it cut loose 1,700 workers in the United States, including Brian and Christine Shoemaker, who lost their jobs at a plant in Westwood, Mass. Staggered, Mr. Shoemaker wondered, How can the bean counters just come in here and say, Hey, its over?

Why release records on jobs created or destroyed and risk confirming stories like the one above?

Americans already know Romney’s rich. His $250 million net worth places him not just among the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, but among the wealthiest 0.001 percent. Somehow that still doesn’t stop him from reminding us. As Josh Marshall points out, we know Romney was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and then made enough money to upgrade it to gold.

That’s how vulture capitalism works.

A former managing partner at Bain, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, made it clear that job creation was never the point at Bain.

Bain managers said their mission was clear. “I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation,” said Marc B. Walpow, a former managing partner at Bain who worked closely with Romney for nine years before forming his own firm. “The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

Under Romney’s leadership, Bain certainly created wealth for its investors, no matter what happened to the companies it acquired or the the people worked for them. The Wall Street Journal’s revealing look at Romney’s time at Bain shows that 22% of the companies Bain invested on under Romney’s watch either filed for bankruptcy, reorganized, or closed their doors sometimes with substantial job losses. As Pat Garofalo pointed out, that’s nearly one fourth of the companies Bain invested in.

Some failed so badly that Bain lost its investments. That didn’t put a damper on returns, though. Bain produced about $2.5 billion in returns for its shareholders, out of just $1.1 billion invested. (Romney did alright, too. His campaign estimates his take during his term at Bain as anywhere from $190 million to $250 billion. That’s enough for a lot of $10,000 bets.)

The LA Times piece makes it clear that Bain and its investors profited, no matter what happened to the companies in its portfolio. According to the Wall Street Journal, 70% of Bain’s returns came from just 10 deals. The LA Times article notes that “Four of the 10 companies Bain acquired declared bankruptcy within a few years, shedding thousands of jobs.” Still, Bain profited in eight of those ten deals, including three of the four that went bankrupt.

That’s the way “vulture capitalism” (as I like to call it) works. Bain and its shareholders profited in the end, no matter what else happened.

Since Newt’s first attack on Romney’s vulture capitalist past, Americans have learned even more about Romney. We know that, despite being one of the wealthiest one-percent Romney’s tax rate is decidedly middle class, thanks to the capital gains tax — even though “his money makes money for him, rather than his labor.” Given what we know about his $20 million IRA and his millions in offshor accounts, Americans are beginning to understand how Romney went from “born rich” to “even richer.” Dean Baker explains.

Anyone trying to understand the role of the government in the economy should know that whatever it does or does not do by way of redistribution is trivial compared with the actions it takes to determine the initial distribution. Rich people don’t get rich exclusively by virtue of their talents and hard work; they get rich because the government made rules to allow them to get rich.

I could go on. In fact, I already have.

The bottom line remains the same. John Nichols sums it up pretty well — the thing about Newt and Romney’s attacks on each other is that they’re both right.

It was wild and edgy, as intense as presidential debates get. Romney and Gingrich went back and forth at one another, interrupting, charging, challenging.

And the funny thing is that they were both right.

Gingrich was, by all evidence, a lobbyist for a firm that had a hand in the foreclosure crisis.

Romney was, by all evidence, a self-serving economic opportunist who raided companies and communities in pursuit of ill-gotten gain.

Ron Paul and Rick Santorum took some pokes at the front runners — indeed, Santorum got off a decent there is no difference between President Obama and these two gentlemen riff late in the debate. But neither of the other contenders stated the obvious: the leading contenders for the GOP nod embody everything that leads Americans to dismiss politicians as crooks.

…That’s what was missing at Mondays debate the truth that both these men have histories that should disqualify them from contention.

That’s why my GOP Debate Drinking Game is guaranteed to get you drunk well before the end of the debate.

That’s also why I can’t in good conscience recommend playing it. Given how much these guys get right in their attacks on each other, my GOP Debate Drinking Game is likely to land you in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning, if not the morgue.

But will somebody on Obama’s campaign staff please tell him to stop singing in public? Mrs. Obama, can you speak to your husband about this? [Via TMP.]

It’s not that he’s bad. Frankly, I’ve heard a lot worse. It’s not even about reinforcing the stereotype that all black people can sing and dance, though when it comes to the latter Obama is actually pretty good.

Mrs. Obama’s better, tho’.

Fine, but we gotta draw the line at the singing. It doesn’t come of as … well … presidential. I understand that perhaps the president wants to counter the impression that perhaps he can’t relate to “real people, but this isn’t the way.

And it isn’t his biggest problem. Has seen the Republican slate? Outside of a country club or a Klan meeting, they aren’t all that easy for most voters to relate to.

Besides, I have  two word argument against any further musical pursuits from Obama: Herman Cain.

Seriously.

Stop it.

(And, please, don’t anybody tell him about Etta James just yet.)

How Clintonian of him.First, this is the most interesting parsing I’ve read of Newt’s denial yet.

But let’s parse Newt’s denial:

“The story is false. Every personal friend that I have who knew us in that period says the story is false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false.”

I think that proves too much. Marianne says she turned Newt down on the open marriage. So how would the personal friends know anything about there being an open marriage, if no one says there ever was one?

It’s not news that Newt has gone through two divorces. The unasked question is not whether Newt Gingrich wanted an open marriage then but whether he is in one now and would be in one if he were elected President. Speculation aside, no evidence has been offered on that yet.

Yeah, why would Gingrich need to send personal friends out to deny a conversation occurred between him and Marianne? What would they even know about it if it never occurred in the first place? The most they could say would seem to be that they never heard anything about an open marriage, or that there wasn’t an such thing as far as they knew.

Then there’s another strange question. Why would Newt’s friends know anything about it? Why would it even come up? If it happened, it wasn’t a discussion they had at a dinner party or something, it was a private conversation between two spouses that only the two people in the room and the flies on the wall would know the details of.

And then, of course, there’s Newt’s record to consider. He may say Marianne is lying about the discussion of an open marriage, but it’s already been shown that Gingrich himself lied about the circumstances behind his divorce from his first wife, Jackie.

Newt Gingrich claims that it was his first wife, not Gingrich himself, who wanted their divorce in 1980, but court documents obtained by CNN appear to show otherwise.

… The documents, and interviews with people close to the couple at the time, contradict the Gingrich claim about who wanted the divorce.

Newt Gingrich filed a divorce complaint on July 14, 1980, in Carroll County, saying that “the marriage of the parties is irretriebably (sic) broken.”

Jackie Battley Gingrich, the congressman’s wife and the mother of Jackie Gingrich Cushman, responded by asking the judge to reject her husband’s filing.

“Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time,” her petition said.

Given Newt’s habit of proposing to the next wife before divorcing the current wife, it’s easy to understand him wanting to get the ball rolling.

The same piece also suggests Newt does have a habit of blabbing to friends about his wives and marriages.

Leonard H. “Kip” Carter, a former close Gingrich friend, backed the contention that it was Newt Gingrich who wanted the divorce.

“He (Gingrich) said, ‘You know and I know that she’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president,’ ” Carter, who now lives in South Carolina, told CNN recently, relating the conversation he had with Gingrich the day Gingrich revealed he was filing for divorce. Carter served as treasurer of Gingrich’s first congressional campaigns.

Carter, who was a fellow history professor when Gingrich taught at West Georgia College in Carrollton, said he broke off his friendship with Newt Gingrich because of the congressman’s treatment of his wife during the divorce.

Asked in an e-mail whether that conversation in 1980 occurred the way that Carter recounted, Gingrich spokesman Hammond did not respond.

Interesting point about Newt’s current marriage, if Newt really did say to Marianne that bit about, “You want me all to yourself, but Callista doesn’t care what I do.” That may have been Callista’s big selling point — finally a wife who didn’t care what Newt did, or who he did it with, so long as he kept her in jewelry and Greek cruises (if Newt’s former campaign staff is to be believed).

Then there’s his take on the media’s treatment of it.

King asked Gingrich to respond to allegations by his ex-wife that in 1999,Gingrich asked her to have an open marriage with him.

“Would you like to take some time to respond to that?” asked King.

“No, but I will,” responded Gingrich, receiving loud, sustained applause from the audience.

“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that,” he said.

Funny, but that’s not how he was talking back in 1998.

It was quickly pointed out that on matters of infidelities and the media’s right to ask questions about them, the former House speaker has not always been consistent.

A May 18, 1998 CNN article, for instance, includes this choice nugget:

The speaker once again pledged to say during every public appearance that Americans have the right to know the truth about the Lewinsky matter and that the president is not above the law.

Of course, we already know that as president Newtie plans to place himself above the law.