Renowned author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel condemned several signs containing Holocaust comparisons and anti-Semitic messages at yesterday's "House Call" protests.
One sign at the rally contained images of dead Holocaust victims at the Dachau concentration camp under the banner "National Socialist Health Care." Another sign said that President Barack Obama "takes his orders" from the Rothschilds, a family of Jewish bankers.
Wiesel commented through his eponymous foundation's Twitter account:
Elie Wiesel on the GOP Tea Party's anti-Semitism and Holocaust comparisons: "This kind of political hatred is indecent and disgusting"
The signs also raised the ire of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), which yesterday slammed the signs and called on House Republican leaders who attended the event to condemn them.
The time has come for [John] Boehner, [Eric] Cantor, [Mike] Pence and other GOP leaders -- especially those who were present today -- to condemn these disgusting comparisons and anti-Semitism," said NJDC President David Harris in a statement. "They must tell their base once and for all to cut out this despicable pattern of Holocaust imagery and rhetoric."
Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) joined Democratic colleagues Corrine Brown (Fla.) and Alan Grayson (Fla.) in observing a moment of silence for victims of a deadly shooting at an Orlando office building.
A former worker at the office building opened fire on workers there this afternoon. He is still at large.
Grayson and corrine brown asking for moment of silence on house floor for the vitims in Orlando today - we are all in shock
Grayson and Brown both represent areas of Orlando. Posey's district lies just south of the central Florida city.
The Orlando shooting is the second major act of violence in the country in as many days. Yesterday Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 and wounded 30 at Ft. Hood, Texas.
A GOP lawmaker took to Twitter on Friday to urge supporters to pressure lawmakers to vote against the healthcare bill in the wake of reports that Democrats have having trouble marshaling votes.
Rules Committee member Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) cited comments from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-Md.) that Democrats do not have the 218 votes necessary to pass healthcare reform.
Foxx tweeted before a 2 p.m. Rules Committee meeting designed to establish the terms of debate for the healthcare vote scheduled to be held at 6 p.m. tomorrow. She seemed encouraged that Republicans could delay the vote even further:
Rules Comm meets at 2 pm for tax increase bill called health care. Will meet all night. Democrats do not have votes. Tell them no
Hoyer said that "delay tactics" could prevent the 6 p.m. vote from occurring on time tomorrow. Republicans have complained that the inclusion of an abortion compromise into the bill at today's Rules Committee hearing violates Hoyer House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) pledge to post the full text of legislation online 72 hour before a vote.
But Republicans say that divisions in the Democratic caucus are causing the delays.
Foxx gained the ire of liberals when she said on the House floor this week that Democratic healthcare reform proposals pose a larger threat to America than terrorism.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said on Friday that new, double-digit unemployment numbers are "unacceptable."
Solis' Labor Department released the numbers today that showed 10.2 percent of Americans unable to find jobs in October. Nonfarm payrolls decreased by a higher-than-expected 190,000, but less than 219,000 jobs lost in September.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen on Friday tweeted prayers for the victims of the shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas yesterday that killed 13 and wounded 30.
Mullen said he was "deeply saddened" by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's "senseless" shooting at the base but refused to speculate about Hasan's motives.
Please join OUR military in a moment of silence & prayer 4 the fallen @ Fort Hood - TODAY @ 2:34pmET
Investigators are still determining why Hasan decided to turn a gun on his fellow soldiers. Ft. Hood's base commander Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said there have been unconfirmed reports that Hasan shouted "Allah Akbar!" before he opened fire.
Hasan was set to deploy to Afghanistan. Hasan reportedly made remarks in opposition to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Florida Republican official was fired on Thursday for creating a fake Twitter account to discredit a well known critic of state GOP leaders.
This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. Connecticut GOP officials were found to have created fake accounts for Democratic state lawmakers.
This week, the party fired Tim Nungesser, who was director of the field operations department, and insisted that no one else knew about it.
The victim, however, says that top party officials were aware of what was going on and did nothing until law enforcement identified the culprit. He urged Gov. Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum to investigate and then demand the resignation of the party's executive director and state chairman.
"This is not about me. It's about the Republican Party of the state of Florida cleaning up its act and doing the right thing and getting back on a positive footing so people have confidence in the party again,'' said Jason Steele, chairman of the Brevard County Republican Party.
OTHER CASE
It was the second time in a week in which the state GOP has faced questions about its online activities and whether it is taking sides in intraparty battles. A top Republican operative and Charlie Crist advisor working out of the state party headquarters last week acknowledged he had helped put together an anonymous website criticizing Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio, but said the party had nothing to do with it.
Steele, a vocal critic of the state party leadership's spending, said that about three months ago someone called him and urged him to tone down his Twitter messages. Checking online, he discovered a Twitter account with his name and photo that since April had been tweeting often vulgar comments about party officials.
[...]
The Brevard County Sheriff's Office subpoenaed records from Twitter and from an Internet provider, said Agent Tim Anliker, who expects to wrap up the investigation within the next week.
Anliker declined to identify a suspect, but Steele said the Sheriff's Office tracked the Twitter account to a computer in Nungesser's Palm Bay home. Steele said he spoke to Nungesser and was told that Delmar Johnson, the party's executive director, had seen the account. [...]
Nungesser could not be reached for comments Wednesday. The state party released a statement saying the ``totally unacceptable'' fake Twitter account was done without the knowledge of any other party employee: ``We have taken all appropriate action and the employee has been terminated. This is a continuation of a long-standing political feud between those Brevard County individuals involved [and] is not in any way connected with the Republican Party of Florida.''
A freshman Democrat on Thursday said that Republican lawmakers' attendance at the "House Call" protest was "the saddest thing I've seen here."
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) chided GOPers from skipping out on official House business, including the swearing in ceremony for a special election winner. He made his comment on Twitter:
W/few courageous exceptions, GOP caucus walks out en masse as 2 new members (dems from specials) are sworn in. Saddest thing I've seen here.
Former Lt. Gov. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) was sworn in this afternoon on the House floor. Garamendi replaced former Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) who took a position at the State Department. The other special election winner, Bill Owens (D-N.Y.) will actually be sworn in tomorrow.
Meanwhile Health Caucus, a House Republican group, criticized Democrats for holding official business during the rally:
As an FYI House Dems intentionally called a vote during #housecall. They only want to work when they're afraid.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) on Thursday condemned a fake campaign ad circulating under his name that implies President Barack Obama is a communist.
Wilson became a lighting rod for criticism from the left, and some on the right, when he shouted "you lie!" at President Barack Obama during his September speech on healthcare reform before a joint session of Congress. He later apologized for interrupting the speech, but the House later voted to officially condemn Wilson.
The fifth-term congressman said on his Twitter account "Have heard about a fake ad circulating under my name. To be clear, this ad is not produced by our campaign, is offensive, & shld be removed."
The 30-second ad begins with a clip of President Barack Obama's speech to students on the first day of school this year. Red-colored text scrolls across the screen that says "Community Activist," a message that morphs into "Communist Activity."
The image then changes from Obama to clips of Red Army parades featuring infantrymen, tanks, and rockets. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev appears on screen speaking at a rostrum saying "your children will be communists." Then, it flashes to a segment of President Lyndon B. Johnson's controversial "Daisy" campaign ad in which the narrator says "these are the stakes, or we must die."
"The stakes are too high for you to stay home," it concludes. The end of the ad contains Wilson's campaign logo and says "paid for by Joe Wilson for Congress."
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