Updates

Politics:

Little Ricky Santorum, who doesn''t live there anymore, trails Bob Casey in Pennsylvania opinion polls by 23%, 56 to 33.

Coingate impresario Tom Noe plead guilty yesterday to illegally funneling campaign contributions to President Bush; prosecutors plan to recommend a two-and-one-half year sentence, while he could have gotten 15 years and a $950,000 fine. He still faces charges of embezzling from Ohio state worker's compensation funds.

AP has a story about moderate Republicans; says Blutarski Sweeney faces a "tough challenge" from Kirsen Gillibrand (who I learned from 20TrueBlue blog pronounces her name "Jill-i-brand")



Soccer:

Australia's Harry Kewell won't be fully fit for the World Cup group games.

Peter Crouch's scored England's third goal in their tune-up against Hungary last week, then did an 80s-style robot dance; here are photos, and video of the same dance, on a dance floor. Too funny.

The US beat Latvia 1-0 in Hartford Sunday night (we were there!) in their final tune-up before Germany and the World Cup. Eddie Johnson looked good; a crappy officiating crew from Canada kept calling him offside when he wasn't (we were sitting on the 18 yard line so we had the perfect view in the first half.) Brian McBride, or McHead, was magnificent, playing the entire game and scoring the only goal after getting a giant egg on his forehead from a clumsy Latvian attempted head. Landon Donovan kept taking most of our freekicks, why I can't imagine, as Eddie Lewis is much more accurate. Pablo Mastroeni played well but ran out of gas about the 70th minute. Johny O'Brien played 65 minutes; he's still not 90 minute match fit.

As preparations for our trip to Germany intensify, blogging will be light. I'll have a computer in Germany, so will be filing a few reports from there. Go USA!

Little Ricky, I'm Home!

Santorum's Penn Hills "home", with unmowed lawn this week, Post Office can't deliver

Santorum's real home in Virginia, the McMansion, manicured lawn, mail goes through
Turns out for Pennsylvania Senator 'Little Ricky' Santorum, home is really Virginia. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sent a letter to his supposed Pennsylvania home and it was returned by the post office as "Not Deliverable As Addressed -- Unable To Forward." Read the whole editorial -- it's bitingly funny.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Editorial: Nobody home / Santorum tries to cover his tracks on residency

Before every election, the Post-Gazette routinely sends letters to the candidates seeking material for the Voters Guide. Back in March, as part of that process for the primary, the newspaper sent a letter to Rick Santorum at his home address, at least the one that he claims. Back from Penn Hills came the letter with a sticker from the U.S. Postal Service checked as "Not Deliverable As Addressed -- Unable To Forward."

That is all you need to know about the nasty dispute between the Republican Sen. Santorum and his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., in the November election. The whole thing is rooted in one inconvenient fact for Sen. Santorum: He doesn't live here anymore.

This should add fuel to the fire of constituents, already smarting for having to pay to educate Santorum's children in 'cyber charter school', in Virginia:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Penn Hills loses bid to charge Santorum for online school tuition
School board too late in challenging residency

Because school district officials missed the deadline for filing a challenge, Republican Sen. Rick Santorum and his wife are still considered Penn Hills residents and do not have to repay the school district for the cost of enrolling five of their six children in the online Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School.

In a ruling issued last Friday, Barry Kramer, chief hearing officer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Office of General Counsel, said "Penn Hills' inexplicable failure to object within the statutorily mandated timeline, or even within a reasonable approximation of that timeline, nullifies its tardy objection."

Estimates of the tuition paid by Penn Hills range from $34,000, which Santorum claims was paid to the cyber charter school, to $67,000, which some school board members say the district paid. Under state law, a school district must pay a fee set by the state for each resident who attends a charter school.

I Got To Get Me One of Them PACS

Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) is financing a lavish lifestyle by using a political action committee to pay for coffee and groceries, and by using his position to get a shady mortgage to buy a home he otherwise couldn't afford. Via atrios:

Tha American Prospect: With A Little Help From His Friends

The estates at Shenstone Farm sprawl over 500 acres of steeply rolling, barren hillside, at the point where northern Virginia’s traffic-clogged suburbs finally surrender to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On an unseasonably warm January day, this former horse farm is shrouded in fog so dense that a visitor could imagine a band of gray-clad rebel soldiers emerging from these hilltops in the heart of Civil War country.

Instead, what slowly takes shape from the gloaming are well over 100 McMansions, with more on the way -- massive brick structures jutting out like solitary fortresses, each surrounded by roughly four acres of treeless, lunar-like landscape, with three-car garages and sconce-topped brick monument pillars at the foot of each long driveway. Most sport pricey wood playsets in the backyard.

It is here, some 43 miles by car and a world away from Capitol Hill, that Pennsylvania’s junior U.S. senator, Rick Santorum, and his wife, Karen, bought a home on November 14, 2001, for $643,361 (now assessed by Loudoun County at $757,000). It is here that the most outspoken social conservative in the Senate is raising his six children in the manner he described in his book last year, which caused so much controversy back in the state where he is seeking a third term this fall. And it is here that Santorum departs most mornings for his newest mission: crafting a package of Senate ethics reforms aimed at removing the stain of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

The Santorums bought their oversized Shenstone “estate” even though his financial disclosure forms since 2001 have shown little family income beyond his Senate salary, now $162,100, and he admits that life hasn’t been financially easy. The senator made a startling remark to The New York Times Magazine last spring: “We live paycheck to paycheck, absolutely.” But he explained that his parents help out. “They’re by no means wealthy -- they’re two retired VA [Veterans Administration] employees -- but they’ll send a check every now and then,” he said.

The Prospect decided to heed Santorum’s advice by taking “an honest look at the family budget” -- his family budget. What we found is that Santorum’s exurban lifestyle is financed in ways that aren’t available to the average voter back home in Pennsylvania -- namely a political action committee that lists payments for such unorthodox items as dozens of trips to the Starbucks in Leesburg, a number of stops at fast-food joints, and purchases at Target, Wal-Mart, and a Giant supermarket in northern Virginia. Although a Santorum aide defends those charges as legitimate political costs, good-government experts say the expenditures are at best unconventional, and at worst a possible violation of Senate rules, and the purchases appear to be unorthodox when compared with other senators’ filings. Santorum’s PAC -- a “leadership PAC,” whose purpose is to dispense money to other Republican candidates -- used just 18.1 percent of its money to that end over a recent five-year period, a lower number than other leadership PACs of top senators from both parties.

These facts may well raise questions in Pennsylvanians’ minds about how the senator is conducting their business in Washington. But it is Santorum’s Virginia home that raises the hardest questions for the third-ranking Senate Republican.

* * *

Initially, according to Loudoun County property records, the purchase was financed with a $405,000 mortgage from a conventional lender, Westminster Mortgage Company. But a year later, the couple refinanced for $500,000. That was not unusual in the fall of 2002, when many homeowners were refinancing to take advantage of plunging interest rates, while also cashing in on the rising equity in their homes. What was curious was the source of the increased mortgage. It was a new private bank catering to “affluent investors and institutions” -- whose officers have contributed $24,000 to Santorum’s political action committees and re-election campaign -- called Philadelphia Trust Company.

Dick & Lynn Cheney: Hypocrites

The Cheneys = Hypocrisy personified

Posted by beaconess on Democratic Underground:

Pat Robertson: Blames Mary Cheney, by extension, of responsibility for 9/11 terrorist attacks. "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America--I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen."(September 2001)

Lynn and Dick Cheney's response: Silence

Rick Santorum: Accuses Mary Cheney, by definition, of immorality comparable to polygamy, adultery and incest. "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything." (April 2003)

Lynn and Dick Cheney's response: Silence

Alan Keyes: Specifically accuses Mary Cheney, by name, of being a "selfish hedonist." (August 2004)

Lynn and Dick Cheney's response: Silence

John Kerry: Sympathetically and eloquently explains that the Cheney's gay daughter is "she's being who she was. She's being who she was born as."

Lynn and Dick Cheney's response: THIS IS NOT A GOOD MAN!!!! WHAT A CHEAP AND TAWDRY POLITICAL TRICK!!! YOU SAW A MAN WHO WILL DO AND SAY ANYTHING TO GET ELECTED!!!

See also this post from blogactive, reminding us that before Mary Cheney signed on as campaign director for her father, she was an out lesbian activist for Coors. TAKE ACTION: There's Something About Mary. She was the paid lesbian diplomat for Coors Beer!