Republican Senator Mel Martinez has acknowledged that a memo portraying the Terri Schiavo Congressional circus as a great political opportunity for Republicans originated from his office.
Right-wing radicals, including syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, have insisted for two weeks that the memo did not originate from the GOP—the hapless Weekly Standard ran not one but a pair of two-page stories, both written by contributors to the equally hapless right-wing Powerline blog, ridiculing the notion that Senate Republicans had anything to do with the “pathetic piece of work” and asserting that it “has all the signs of a political dirty trick”— but Martinez says a staffer in his office acknowledged authorship today.
Judging from Powerline contributor Johnson’s assessment of the memo in his Weekly Standard self-parody, the staffer should have been fired for incompetence whether or not he worked alone:
The memo in question is a pathetic piece of work. It is on a blank piece of paper with no letterhead, signature, or identification. It gets the Senate bill number wrong, misspells Terri Schiavo’s name, and is full of typographical errors. The only people reported to have distributed it (by the New York Times) were Democratic staffers. And–most fundamentally–it is odd to think that the Republican leadership would produce a “talking points” memo discussing what great politics the Schiavo case was for Republicans. Those aren’t talking points; not for Republicans, anyway.
Will the radical Right retract their accusations of fakery? Nuh-uh. The staffer in question has tendered his resignation and, after some “lone gunman” muttering, all talk of faked memos and dirty tricks and biased media will vanish (well, okay, not dirty tricks and biased media) into the bilious swamp whence it came.
Because the party of personal responsibility is never personally responsible for anything.
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Update: the illiterate senior Martinez staffer is the Senator’s legal counsel, Brian Darling. The Senator is baffled.
Martinez said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo. “I never did an investigation, as such,” he said. “I just took it for granted that we wouldn’t be that stupid … It was intended to be a working draft. He doesn’t really know how I got it.”
Martinez is just another example of the lying machine that has turned our houses of government into OUT HOUSES!
Apparently, Martinez just earned himself another gold star on his “shitting seat” on the hill. of course his personal attorney will not longer be allowed to follow his boss to the potty and wash off and dry his ass!
score one more for the fascist media as they have once again filled the sheeple’s mini minds with reinforcement crap which should get them (sheelple)through another day of denial at the water cooler.
enenoha
Poor Mel Martinez, doomed to everlasting bafflement. However DO these things HAPPEN to him — over, and over, and over … ?
Clearly it’s all the fault of a left-hand twist of randomness, ha’nts, a bizarre chain of accidental sad coincidences.
‘Course it is.
That’s a good little summary of his Series of Unfortunate Events. I had no idea he was so put upon. Poor guy must be terrified just to step out the door every day, knowing that some evil will be done in his name.
Name one Republican at the national level (since Eisenhower took responsibility for the U2 fiasco in May 1950 after saying that the President, as the guy holding the watch, is responsible for actions by underlyings) who has had balls enough to take responsibility. Remember Arlo Gutherie’s “Presidential Rag” re Nixon – “if you didn’t know about that stuff, what else don’t you know …”.