Monday, April 24th, 2006...6:40 am
I Know, I Know, He’s Just a “Private Citizen” on His “Day Off.”
I don’t know all of the rules involving congressional staff members, but I understand that they have to be very careful about getting involved in politics. For example, they cannot e-mail political (or even personal) messages on their congressional accounts. A member of congress cannot direct a member of his staff to do political work. Doing anything that smacks of electioneering or campaign work during office hours is a big no-no.
The guy without the name badge is Todd Sommers, a legislative assistant to Rep. J. D. Hayworth.
Now, check out who is hanging out at the back of the crowd at Harry Mitchell’s announcement, looking very uncomfortable. Apparently, Sommers was also spotted one day (around 11:00, dead center during federally funded office hours) at Tempe City Hall doing research on Mitchell’s tenure as Mayor of Tempe.
You know, most campaigns can pay for people to do this sort of opposition research so they don’t need to break the rules and send folks on federal salaries to do it. I thought Hayworth raised somewhere north of $800,000, you’d think he’d have enough to pay someone to do this. Maybe he’s anticipating spending all that money on something else, like attorneys.
25 Comments
April 24th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
…. the blackberry is a dead giveaway.
haha
April 24th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Mister T is right, but I think he missed other tells, such as the obvious discomfort at being around a large group of intelligent people.
April 24th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I wonder if there is a way to audit Hayworth’s office payroll account and verify that he was on the clock when this picture was taken?
As far as Congressional staffers not being political, I suspect that is only our staffers. Remember 2000, when the RNC rounded up a bunch of paid political staffers and sent them down to Florida so they could riot outside the door of the people doing the recounts?
April 24th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
The body language is a dead give-away, too. He obviously feels defensive because he knows he’s doing something wrong and will be in the shit if caught at. And guess what?
April 24th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
New to this blog. As a GOPer, its sad to see that Hayworth and his staff are corrupt. Hayworth and his ethical problems are bringing the Republican Party in Arizona down, and it getting difficult to defend this. Hopefully, we get smart and have at least an honest person run against Hayworth in the primary.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
Nice story. So I went to Harry’s web site. I am always a little leery when there is no link for issues. Doesn’t the candidate stand for anything?
So I did some checking. Harry doesn’t have all those pictures of little children surrounding him to hide the fact that he is pro-abortion (SB1325, 3-2-06), does he? I hope not because I am pretty sure that will come out during the campaign.
I know, I don’t understand, those are all wanted children and Harry only supports mutilating unwanted children. Not quite, see SB1052, 3-3-05. That bill was so reasonable that even Janet signed it, 4-25-05.
I know, I am a one-issue nut job. It’s just with Len for Governor and Colette for Senate on the ballot, Harry may find a lot of pro-life voters in CD 5 showing up at the polls on November 7th.
April 24th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Phx Kid, that was vetoed on the 17th.
Anyway, unless you plan on getting up with us women forced to have babies we do not want for the 3 AM feeding, could you kindly stay out of our uteruses? Thank you.
As for this guy, I knew the one you told me was part of the opposition was not Mister T! That guy later filled out a volunteer form. :p
April 24th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Elizabeth, there is a neat little button on the legislative web site titled change session. You should try it sometime. Then you could find out about bills like BS 1052 (unborn children, protection) that were introduced during the 47th Legislature – First Regular Session with a first read in the Senate on January 12th, 2005 and later signed by the Governor on April 25th, 2005.
I can understand that not everyone is ready to be a mother. There is this cool thing called adoption that does not require killing your baby but rather giving her to a loving couple that would like to raise her. Yes, that does entail continuing the pregnancy. Such a small price for not having your own child killed.
btw, I have no interest in being inside your uterus. I would speculate that most unborn babies have that same feeling if they are the one being aborted.
April 24th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Maybe next time, he’ll remember the fake ’70s porn star moustache. LOL
Seriously, while even I consider this particular incident to be ’slap-on-the-wrist’ stuff (and I’m pretty partisan), if the Hayworth campaign is already playing fast and loose with basic rules, what’s the rest of the campaign season going to be like?
April 24th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
phx kid:
There is no problem with believing that abortion is bad. And Democrats have been quietly implementing a plan to reduce the need for it for over a decade, involving sex ed, birth control and family planning. And it’s worked– even Right to Life concedes that the number of abortions is down by anywhere from a quarter to a third (statistics are hard to come by) since it reached a peak in the early 1990’s. The problem is that some people believe that the only way to oppose something you don’t like is to make it illegal.
I don’t agree with that point of view. It’s narrowly focused and requires criminalizing something that only a minority even believe should be a crime at all.
Now, anti-abortionists will cite competing polls saying that people believe abortion is immoral, or bad or whatever.
However, that does not equate with criminal.
For example, I believe that smoking tobacco is bad. It kills tens of thousands of people every year (including hundreds, maybe even thousands of non-smokers) and costs this country billions in hospital bills, lost productivity and money that is spent on useless tobacco products that are simply burned up and thrown away. It also causes millions of dollars every year in damages from fires that wouldn’t start if nobody smoked. And for this reason, I fully support spending money on efforts to prevent kids and others from starting, enforcing laws against giving cigarettes to minors, and helping people quit.
But I don’t support banning nicotine, and I don’t support banning abortion for the same reason. It’s not the purpose of Government to interfere in people’s personal decisions, and there are a lot of ways to oppose something without making it a crime.
As far as adoption, if pro-life people spent a tenth of the effort on promoting adoption and finding good homes for the many older kids who are stuck in the foster system right now, as they do on trying to criminalize abortion, then I suspect that on top of all the other problems that were solved, we would see quite a few less abortions.
April 25th, 2006 at 12:36 am
I am sorry, I misread the number and looked up the wrong bill. The bill also makes an exception for someone performing an abortion. This bill is designed and intended to charge someone who has harmed an in utero fetus with an additional crime. This generally happens when a woman has an abusive relationship. And these are generally called Laci Laws since they are the result of the dual murder conviction of Scott Peterson who murdered his wife and unborn child.
However, until *you* have had to carry a fetus that you do NOT want to carry, you cannot tell me or any other woman “oh just put it up for adoption.” If a woman does not want her pregnancy, then she is going to do anything to get rid of it up to and including killing herself.
And you do want to be in my uterus because you want to tell me what I can and cannot have in it.
April 25th, 2006 at 8:37 am
Any time you endeavor to reduce an argument to only two choices, you are generally on the wrong track.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:03 am
eli mentioned “a plan to reduce” “And it’s worked” Is that why, according to Arizona Department of Health Services, the number of abortions in Arizona went from 8,226 in 2001 to 12,301 in 2004? Some reduction.
The act of smoking tobacco in and of itself does not result in terminating another human life. If someone wants to sit in their house alone and smoke 3 packs a day that does not impact another persons health or life. It does cost money but the simple solution is to make smokers pay for their own heath care and not force the cost onto society.
“many older kids stuck in the foster system” so are they better off if we just kill them in the womb and get it over with? As bad as it can be they have a better chance at survival in the foster system then they do fighting against the abortionist’s forceps.
Elizabeth - so why did Harry vote against SB 1052? It even had an exception for abortions. What could he have objected to? Is it important to him that even wanted unborn babies have no legal standing?
If you don’t want to carry the baby don’t get pregnant. Democrats are always talking about how great contraception is, well then use it. The one exception would be rape. If you need to kill someone because of a rape, make it the rapist. Certainly he is more guilty than the unborn child.
You can have anything you want in you uterus. I just think that Roe v. Wade and many Democrats take a very extreme position on abortion. i.e. opposition to parental (notarized) consent and fetal protection laws like SB 1052. If your position on the issue is so great why don’t Harry and Janet and Jim spell it out on their web sites? What are they afraid of? They should be proud of the history of abortions in America since 1973 and the role they have played in that history.
April 25th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
To get sense of the complete, over the top, nuttiness of the prolife movement, I highly recommend the latest Podcast of the program NOW by PBS. It is listed under politics podcasts on I-Tunes and is dated April 14th. It talks about what is happening in South Dakota and the extent to which the leader there has not only gotten the pro-life legislation passed, but how she also has done everything in her power to destroy prevention efforts other than…get this…abstinence programs and a freakish cottillion where girls make a special virginity promise to their fathers. It also lists how so many who are pro-choice have been railroaded through government efforts into fear of speaking out or signing petitions. Last, it details the complete disregard for science by a task-force of that was stacked with pro-lifers. This task force and its lies led to the legislation under debate now.
Sorry PhxKid…but while wonderful people can disagree, I find much of the movement pretty ridiculous and frightening.
April 25th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
phx kid:
here are national numbers from Right to Life, certainly not skewed in favor of Democrats.
It shows quite conclusively a decline in abortion since 1990.
If that trend has leveled off or reversed, then I would stop and ask what has changed since the years when we were having so much success? Answer: the main change to the sex ed curriculum has been the introduction of ‘abstinence only’ education. Look at the math of it. If you have 90% of students in a school abstinent (which would be an amazing ’success’), but you don’t teach the rest of them about safe sex, then 10% of the students are engaging in risky sex and could result in unwanted pregnancies. On the other hand if you taught traditional sex ed (which still teaches that abstinence is the only failsafe way) and you have 50% of the students sexually active but using condoms which are 98% effective, then only (.50)(.02) = 1% are exposed to the same risks as 10% are exposed to under the ‘abstinence only’ scenario. Hence about ten times as many unwanted pregnancies.
Now, true the numbers here are only an example, and may or may not be in the neighborhood of the actual numbers, but the point is made: abortions declined during the hey day of traditional sex ed/condom distribution etc. but if that trend is now reversing itself then I would suggest that it is almost certainly due to ‘abstinence only’ education programs since that is really the only thing that has changed much in terms of the sex education over the past several years.
April 25th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
kralmajales You may view the movement as “nuttiness” but the interesting thing is that science is actually on our side. The pro-life pregnancy centers are anxious to get a hold of sonogram machines so they can show pregnant mothers the living child inside of them. After seeing the image many moms decide to keep their babies.
Science and medical technology have greatly supported the view that the unborn child is a separate life.
eli are you actually telling me that we are making progress because only 1.29 human babies were torn apart limb from limb in the womb in 2004? I went to high school in the late 70’s and even without sex ed and growing up with conservative parents, everyone knew how a condom worked and what it was for. They are actually not very complicated.
Are you really saying that kids are engaging in “risky sex” just because they do not know any better and if someone just gave them more information they would start behaving wisely? If that were the case then there would be no underage alcohol or drug use.
People sometimes make mistakes and killing the unborn does not solve the mistake. It makes the consequence go away but it does not fix the underlying issue. Many women go on to have multiple abortions after their first one.
According to the Arizona Department of Heath statistic most abortions are performed on women in the 20-29 year old range. Sounds like you need to reach them somewhere else besides school since most of them are not in school (except maybe college.) Even then from what it says on their web site the U of A health services offers contraception services. Contraception has been widely available for at least a few decades now. This is not a failure of teaching about contraception in the schools. It is a breakdown of a moral structure that reserved the sex act for situations when the natural result of that act, a living child, would be valued. In valuing our own personal desires above human life we have arrived at the point where we dispense with more than 1 million lives a year. Many Democrats talk about being enlightened or progressive. Destroying a million lives a year does not sound like much of either.
April 25th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
I have no idea why Harry voted against it. Probably because he was concerned it was the first step in banning a woman’s right to choose her family size. I know that is the first thing I thought about when I read it. Once you start saying that a fetus is a person under the law, then you can start forcing women to become nothing more then vessals for the fetus they carry. And then you get into forcing women into prisons to make sure they do not self abort. Or do you not care if they do that and risk putting their lives in danger?
If you want to know so much about Harry’s reasons, go to a campaign event and ask him, send him an email, or contact the campaign staff regarding it. And do the same for the other people you mentioned. I can give you MY opinion regarding abortion and that is all.
As for “if you want to not have kids, do not get pregnant,” yeah that is why I support comprehensive sex ed, fuller access to contraception (including making ALL health insurance providers pay for the Pill) and making Plan B OTC.
However NOTHING in life is perfect and if they have a contraception that fails, then I want any woman who has no interest in becoming a mother at this or any time during her reproductive years to have access to an abortion if that is what she wants. Not my decision and I stand behind hers since again *I* do not have to have the baby, I do not have to deal with the consequences while *she* does.
Also you might want to read up on why a woman decides on an abortion rather then just saying why YOU think we women should not get them.
You will be surprised.
April 25th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Oh and here, a few reasons a woman might also chose an abortion.
April 25th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Harry doesn’t have all those pictures of little children surrounding him to hide the fact that he is pro-abortion
I know. Only Republicans care about little children. That’s why they vote against paying to send drugs to Africa to help little children live.
April 25th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
And vote to slash Head Start funds, and WIC, and destroyed welfare, cut subsidies for section eight…
yes Republicans LOVE the little children.
April 25th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Don’t forget the vote to cut child-support enforcement, which was just $59 million worth of wasteful discretionary spending. Praise the Lord!
April 25th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Oh, and let’s not forget how Arizona is still bringing up the rear in paying teachers.
Yeah, they love kids all right.
April 27th, 2006 at 12:56 am
Wow! Phx-Kid is a good spindoctor for the GOP. This post was about JD Hayworth and corruption and it ended up into a heated debate on abortion. Standard GOP method and we democrats fell for it.
Back to the subject please.
April 27th, 2006 at 2:22 am
He always does that Erik. I just was getting tired of someone demanding to tell me what to have in my uterus.
May 1st, 2006 at 11:16 am
Looks like a photoshop job to me. You hippies are way to up tight!
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