Justin's Political Corner

This past weekend, former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), best known for resigning his seat after lying about an affair with an Argentinian woman, ran a full-page ad in the Charleston Post & Courier to support his congressional campaign after it was revealed that he had been charged with trespassing at his ex-wife’s house. In the ad, Sanford included his personal cell phone number and told readers to call him “if you have further questions.”

After Sanford published his own cell phone number, House Majority PAC, a Democratic-aligned super PAC, included his number in a fundraising email sent Wednesday.

Sanford responded Thursday by publishing a list of unredacted phone numbers from anybody who had called his cell phone in an attempt to publicly shame them. See a redacted version of the list below:

ThinkProgress spoke with three of the people whose numbers appeared on the list – all were surprised and upset to learn their private phone numbers had been published. 

Sanford’s campaign has grown increasingly erratic as polls show him trailing Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, even in the strongly-Republican district. On Wednesday, in an homage to Clint Eastwood’s infamous RNC chair speech, Sanford used a campaign stop in Charleston to debate a cardboard cutout of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

h/t: Think Progress

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) on Thursday took to Facebook to rail against stricter gun control measures — and, along the way, compared a national gun registry to the genocide in Rwanda. 

“The 2nd Amendment is (or should be) equal to the 1st Amendment and the 4th Amendment and all of the others,” Duncan wrote on Facebook. “Ask yourselves why it is under attack? Ask yourselves about a National gun registry database and how that might be used and why it is so wanted by progressives.”

Enter the Rwanda comparison. “Read about the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes,” Duncan continued. “Read that all Tutsi tribe members were required to register their address with the Hutu government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for slaughter at the hands of the Hutu. (Since the government had the names and addresses of nearly all Tutsis living in Rwanda (remember, each Rwandan had an identity card that labeled them Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa) the killers could go door to door, slaughtering the Tutsis.”

Duncan wrote that he used this particular example “to warn that national databases can be used with evil consequences.”

While the National Rifle Association has long warned that expanding background checks would lead to a national gun registry, no such legislation has been proposed.

Read Duncan’s full Facebook post here.

H/T: TPM Livewire

Former South Carolina Governor and current Republican nominee for Congress Mark Sanford has his work cut out for him if he wants to win the special election on May 7th, his first attempt at staging a political comeback after being forced to resign his governorship following a very public affair. But that didn’t stop one local county party chairman from adding another: the looks of the female Democratic nominee.

Sanford is running against Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a successful South Carolinian businesswoman who easily won her Democratic Party primary last month. But rather than challenging Colbert Busch on policy or credentials, Republicans seem focused on her physical appearance:

“Everybody is really concerned because she’s not a bad-looking lady, she is a good speaker and she’s got some money,” said Jerry Hallman, chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party. “In politics, those things are important.”

This is not the first time a female candidate for office has been dismissed as little more than a pretty face with a nice speaking voice, but in the case of Colbert-Busch, who is the older sister of Comedy Central personality Stephen Colbert, she has been subjected to an unusual amount of sexist coverage by all corners of the media.

Whether intentional or not, every one of these headlines poses a problem: they continue to define Colbert-Busch not based on her own successes but by the successes of her famous brother. In doing so, it allows readers — and, more importantly, voters — to do the same. Which of course isn’t fair to Colbert-Busch, who has the right to be judged on her own merits.

h/t: Adam Peck at Think Progress

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford on Tuesday cleared another hurdle in his bid for political redemption, defeating a former Charleston County council member to win the GOP nomination for the U.S. House seat he held for three terms.

“It’s been a very long journey. And in that journey I am humbled to find ourselves where we find ourselves tonight,” said Sanford, whose political career was derailed four years ago when, as sitting governor, he disappeared from the state only to return to acknowledge an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman.

That woman, María Belén Chapur,  and Sanford are now engaged. She appeared at Sanford’s side during his victory speech, smiling and applauding the former governor, who thanked her for being long-suffering while he was campaigning. She did not address the crowd.

With all of the precincts reporting Sanford had about 57 percent of the vote in the 1st District to 43 percent for Curtis Bostic, the former county council member. The candidates were vying in the GOP runoff after they finished as the top two vote-getters in a 16-way GOP primary last month.

Sanford will face Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, and Green Party candidate Eugene Platt in a May special election.

Colbert Busch released a statement late Tuesday saying “I look forward to a vigorous campaign that focuses on creating jobs, balancing our country’s budget and choosing an independent-minded leader who shares the values of the great people of South Carolina.”

Sanford, a former three-term congressman and two-term governor, said earlier Tuesday that the runoff would give a good indication whether voters have moved past his personal indiscretions.

“I’m both humbled and grateful for the response of the voters here tonight,” he said later.

Sanford was a rising Republican political star before he vanished from South Carolina for five days in 2009. Reporters were told he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but the then-married governor later tearfully acknowledged he was visiting María Belén Chapur, which he told everyone at a news conference announcing his affair. He later called her his soul mate and the two were engaged earlier last year.

The opening for Sanford came after U.S. Rep. Tim Scott was appointed to fill the remaining two years of U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint’s seat. DeMint resigned to head The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Mark Sanford knows the 1st District well. Elected to the seat in 1994 — Jenny Sanford managed his first campaign and was a close adviser for most of his career — he served three terms before voters elected him governor in 2002.

h/t: Washington Post

Records show Curtis Bostic who was the attorney for the Christian World Adoption Agency (CWA) was paid 466,000.00 in 2011 and 189,000.00 in 2010 for services rendered to CWA. CWA has been accused by critics of being

– a multi-million dollar Charleston, S.C.-based company which critics contend is nothing but a sophisticated human trafficking outfit.

Christian World Adoption Agency’s motto was:

God is in control of our agency and your adoption.

Well it seems that God filed for bankruptcy and those who paid CWA for children were left holding the bag when they filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in February 2013.

As a result of a CBS News investigation and the banning of adoption agencies worldwide, CWA went bankrupt in February 2013. A few months prior to the bankruptcy filing Mr. Bostic’s law firm was still being paid for services connected to the CWA — even though they were soon to file a chapter 7 bankruptcy petition. Records obtained by BU show that The Bostic Law firm was paid 26,641.07 dollars on November 7th 2012, and another 5,000.00 dollars on November 20th 2012. On December 5th 2012 Bostic’s firm was paid 5,906.86 along with another 243.25 paid December 12th 2012. The last payments to them were 5,000.00 on December 19th 2012, and 1,942.73 which was paid on January 16th 2013; less than one month prior to the filing. The total over the three month period was 44,733.91 dollars.

The video above highlights the issues involved with CWA’s practices and how they went about coercing Ethiopian families to sell their children to CWA, who then told the children that they would be going off to America to get an education where once obtained they would be allowed to come back home. Prospective parents were told a different and more compelling false narrative to tug at their heart strings and get them to pony up money for the adoption. The children were not told that they could no longer come home, nor were they under the impression that they were being adopted on a permanent basis. In the video above Curtis Bostic is seen at the end trying to explain the CWA’s position after it was revealed to be a potential scam. Bostic goes on to claim that of course people might complain about the process, but that CWA had been responsible for thousands of adoptions worldwide, and that prospective parents would probably complain later but they were not a measure of the whole of CWA’s practices. Bostic told CBS News:

“Sometimes, people are upset when they just simply misunderstand things,” Bostic told CBS.

Of course people can misunderstand things, especially when the truth comes out. It is also easy to claim that a misunderstanding happened when people are finally told the truth by the very children they adopted. Bostic also said in another interview:

It is not the job of an attorney to ascertain what the truth is. It is the job of an attorney to represent people.

Quite a statement coming from a man running for a congressional seat in South Carolina. Of course his boosters like Ali Akbar who is a convicted felon probably won’t care that Bostic was involved in the selling of Ethiopian children, or that the CWA, whom Bostic’s firm represented, was paid very well for several years to give them the best legal services money could buy. But we here at BU question whether or not Bostic is worthy of the congressional seat he is working hard to obtain. If his job is not ascertaining the truth on anything he does, then what does that say about him as a politician? It says to us at BU that the truth be damned, its really all about the dollars and the client who pays you. So if people are supporting Bostic to represent them in Congress, then it stands to reason they would want someone honest and who cares about the truth, and not some paid shill who will do or say anything to get elected. What is clear here is that Bostic doesn’t care about the truth, even when damning video shows the reality behind the Christian World Adoption Agency he represented.

H/T: Breitbart Unmasked

A former executive director and general counsel for the South Carolina Republican Party is facing a firestorm after posting derogatory tweets about the late Trayvon Martin.

Todd Kincannon, who calls himself “The Honey Badger of American Politics” on his Twitter account, posted a series of incendiary tweets on Super Bowl Sunday, commenting on the blackout inside the New Orleans Superdome (Kincannon tweeted: “It hasn’t been this dark in the Superdome since all those poors occupied it after Hurricane Katrina,”) and even Beyonce Knowles’ halftime performance. But it was his tweets referencing the slain teen that drew the most outrage online.

Kincannon Tweeted that the Superbowl “sucks more d— than adult Trayvon Martin would have for drug money,” and despite angry responses from some on Twitter, he continued to tweet about Martin.

Kincannon drew some support, and he tweeted to one supporter that the 17-year-old, who would have turned 18 on Tuesday, was a “dangerous thug who needed to be put down like a rabid dog.”

Kincannon, in an interview on HuffPost Live Monday, defended his tweets stating they are “nothing more than satire” or “high-profile trolling.”

“The left has decided that Trayvon Martin was just this perfect little angel,” Kincannon said in a phone interview on the show. “He was a thug. Hetweeted about drug use. This guy, he was a criminal, and the left has decided to make him some sort of martyr. That is what I don’t understand.”

h/t: TheGrio.com

On Monday, ThinkProgress reported about a Mexican restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina whose employees wear T-shirts (pictured below) showing a wooden trap with tacos as bait and the caption “HOW TO CATCH AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT”.

Now, Taco Cid issued an equally offensive response on its website, flagged by the Palmetto Public Record. The eatery defended the shirts as “witty and comical,” arguing that “Taco Cid and it’s [sic] employees are not racist.” The restaurant insists that the shirts, which show a pair of tacos under a trap and singles out “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS,” contain “NO racial nor hate remarks towards any specific ethnic group.”

But it also goes on to articulate a false political argument, claiming that undocumented workers cause everyone to “pay more in taxes in support of their illegal activities.” In 2010 alone, unauthorized immigrants paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes and pump billions in purchasing power into the economy. This output and spending generates jobs and opportunity.

h/t: Scott Keyes at ThinkProgress Justice

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who left public life two years ago after mysteriously disappearing to visit his then-mistress in Argentina, is poised to re-enter the political arena.

Acknowledging reports that he is seriously weighing a congressional bid for the seat he once held,Sanford wrote in an email late Saturday: “To answer your question, yes the accounts are accurate.”Sanford promised “further conversation on all this” at a later date.

The two-term governor was a rising Republican political star before he vanished from South Carolina for five days in 2009. Reporters were told he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but he later tearfully acknowledged he was visiting Maria Belen Chapur, a woman he called his soul mate at a news conference announcing his affair. The two were engaged earlier this year.

The opening for Sanford comes after Rep. Tim Scott was appointed to fill the remaining two years of Sen. Jim DeMint’s seat. DeMint announced earlier this month he was resigning.

News that Sanford, 52, may be interested in the seat comes days after his ex-wife, Jenny, appeared to be dipping her toe into the state’s political waters.

She was reportedly on Gov. Nikki Haley’s short list of candidates to fill the seat that went to Scott.Jenny Sanford later said she would think about a run for Scott’s seat representing the coastal 1st Congressional District, the seat her ex-husband is now considering.

“I’d be crazy not to look at the race a little bit,” she said Tuesday, before reports about Mark Sanford surfaced.

Mark Sanford knows the 1st District well. Elected to the seat in 1994 — Jenny Sanford managed his first campaign and was a close adviser for most of his career — he served three terms before voters elected him governor in 2002.

The former governor would bring name recognition and money to the race — two things especially important due to the short campaign season and wide-open field.

Whether voters are ready to welcome Sanford back to politics is another issue.

“It’s absolutely absurd. He just has so much baggage. He was such an embarrassment to the state, we don’t need that,” said Gloria Day, a retired attorney in Charleston.

He avoided impeachment but was censured by the Legislature. He also had to pay more than $70,000 in ethics fines — still the largest in state history — after AP investigations raised questions about his use of state, private and commercial aircraft.

Scott will be sworn in Jan. 3 to replace DeMint, who announced his resignation earlier this month to lead The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Scott, who would have to seek election in 2014, will become the state’s first black U.S. senator and the first black Republican U.S. senator from the South since Reconstruction.

Candidates for Scott’s seat must file by the end of January. Primaries will be held in March, with the general election in May.

State GOP Chairman Chad Connelly said as of Friday, 14 Republicans had expressed interest.

“Gov. Sanford getting in would certainly alter the dynamics. That list would go down significantly,” he said.

Based on name recognition alone, Sanford’s chances would be good in a runoff, he said.

Sanford has $1.2 million left in his state campaign coffers.

John Dietz of Daniel Island said the affair wouldn’t affect his vote.

“He said he found his soul mate, and at one point in my life that’s exactly how I felt. I empathized,” said Dietz, a retiree who characterizes himself as a moderate.

Dietz said he was disappointed that Sanford could not work with his fellow Republicans in the Legislature.

“I did not necessarily agree with a lot of things he did politically,” he said. “I’m very much neutral at this point.”

Retired Presbyterian minister Dick Giffen of Mount Pleasant said he wouldn’t support Sanford, but added that it was unrelated to the affair.

“He wasn’t able to bring people together and get action done,” Giffen said. “He didn’t produce anything. … I really wasn’t impressed with him.”

Sanford’s contentious relationship with legislators seemed to worsen with each year of his tenure.

But longtime Republican activist and donor John Rainey, who convinced Sanford to run for governor after leaving Congress, said Sanford’s last six months in office, following his tearful press conference, were his most effective.

h/t: Yahoo! News

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) is expected to run for the state’s 1st Congressional district, currently being vacated by Rep. Tim Scott who is replacing Sen. Jim DeMint in the Senate, CNN reports:

“He’s looking all but certain to do it,” said a former top aide to Sanford, who did not want to be identified while prematurely revealing the plans.

A formal announcement will come soon, the source said.

Sanford’s ex-wife, Jenny, is also reportedly considering a bid for the seat.

h/t: TPM LiveWire

Like most of the Tea Party Republican House Class of 2010, Senator-Designate Tim Scott (R-SC) ran for Congress vowing to eliminate “earmarks” — the system Congressional lawmakers once used to direct federal spending to their districts. But a ThinkProgress examination of public records reveals that in his two years in Congress, he instead used an even less transparent method known as “lettermarking” to attempt to secure funding for his district.

In May 2011, just months after Scott was sworn in as a U.S. Representative and the new Republican House majority opted to ban earmarks, Scott joined four other South Carolina Congressmen in writing to Secretary of Energy Chu on behalf of a South Carolina manufacturer.

They wrote:

The purpose of this letter is to express our support for Robert Bosch LLC (Bosch) and the company’s recent response to DOE Funding Opportunity Number FOA000023900219 (Recirculated Exahust Gas Intake Sensor – REGIS). In addition, we are aware that Bosch’s partner in this application is Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR). Bosch has been a committed and active member of the South Carolina manufacturing community since 1974.

View the letter below:

The Department of Energy approved the application as requested, giving Bosch a $550,000 federal project.

But publicly, Scott backed a ban on earmarks, arguing that they were corrupt and wasteful. “Washington is filled with politicians who promise that they will deliver goodies to the folks back home. What those politicians don’t tell us is that by playing that game, they force the taxpayers of our district to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful pork projects all over the country,” he observed in his 2010 campaign. He told his future constituents, “The earmark system leaves us with crumbs while others get the loaves.”

h/t: Josh Israel at Think Progress

Tim Scott, who is set to replace Jim DeMint in the Senate, got his start in politics when he was elected in 1996 to the Charleston County Council. One year later, according to his 2010 campaign website, “he placed a plaque of the Ten Commandments outside council offices to show his support for the Ten Commandments as a guide for conduct, especially within the county chambers.”

The city was promptly sued for this blatant violation of the First Amendment. By 1998, Scott’s colleagues had decided to remove his display and settle the lawsuit. When challenged on why he was wasting taxpayer dollars, Scott replied that “whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal is worth it.”

Scott’s unconstitutional grandstanding as a county councilmember made him a favorite of the Christian right in South Carolina and put him on the track that he’s followed ever since. Scott returned to his roots while addressing a Tea Party rally in January, hosted by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, ahead of a GOP primary debate.

Scott claimed that the “greatest minority under assault today are Christians.” “No doubt about it,” he emphasized. (Note that Scott says 1995 in the video, but he misspoke – he was elected in 1996 and posted the display in 1997.)

Tim Scott actually believes what he said about Christians being a minority under assault. Never mind that Christians aren’t a minority. Never mind that Christians control every branch of government at every level. Never mind that Christians aren’t under assault in any conceivable way.

Still, Scott feels that Christians are a minority under assault because Christians like him are being prevented by the Constitution and other Americans – Christian and non-Christian alike – from forcing everyone to live in accordance with their extreme views and beliefs. It’s a bit like the Taliban claiming that the Afghan government is attacking Islam.

h/t: People For The American Way

Tim Scott is America’s newest senator today after getting tapped by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to fill the vacancy left by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). DeMint announced this month that he was leaving the Senate to head up the Heritage Foundation, an arch-conservative think tank in Washington DC.

Though DeMint left big, controversial shoes to fill for Republicans, few conservatives will be disappointed with Scott’s record. Elected to Congress just two years ago in the Tea Party wave, Scott has already garnered headlines for his plan to impeach President Obama, his legislation to cut off union members’ children from food stamps, and his defense of Big Oil.

Here’s a quick look at Scott’s record:

• Floated impeaching Obama over the debt ceiling. As the debt ceiling debate raged in the summer of 2011 because of the intransigence of Tea Party freshmen like Scott, the nation inched perilously close to defaulting on its obligations. One option discussed by some officials to avoid that scenario was for the president to assert that the debt ceiling itself was an unconstitutional infringement on the 14th Amendment. However, Tim Scott told a South Carolina Tea Party group that if Obama were to go this route, it would be an “impeachable act.”
• Proposed a bill to cut off food stamps for entire families if one member went on strike.One of the most anti-union members of Congress, Scott proposed a bill two months after entering Congress in 2011 to kick families off food stamps if one adult were participating in a strike. Scott’s legislation made no exception for children or other dependents.
• Wanted to spend an unlimited amount of money to display Ten Commandments outside county building. When Scott was on the Charleston County Council, one of his primary issues was displaying the Ten Commandments outside the Council building. According to the Augusta Chronicle, Scott said the display “would remind council members and speakers the moral absolutes they should follow.” When he was sued for violating the Constitution and a Circuit Judge’s orders, Scott was nonplussed: “Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal (of displaying the Commandments) is worth it.”
• Defended fairness of giving billions in subsidies to Big Oil. Scott and his Republican allies in Congress voted repeatedly last year to protect more than $50 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil corporations. When ThinkProgress asked Scott whether it was fair to do that, especially at a time when oil companies are earning tens of billions in profit every quarter, the Tea Party freshman defended the industry: “fair is a relative word,” said Scott.
• Helped slash South Carolina’s HIV/AIDS budget. As a state representative, Scott backed a proposal to cut the state’s entire HIV/AIDS budget, despite the fact that South Carolina ranks in the top-third of reported AIDS cases. The cuts were ultimately included in the state’s budget, impacting more than 2,000 HIV-positive South Carolinians who needed help paying for their medication.

h/t: Scott Keyes at Think Progress