April 2nd, 2013
Florida Republican and evangelical leader is arrested on child porn charges.

“He has for sure got some pretty significant images.” That’s what Walton County Sheriff Mike Adkinson said of Lane Rees, 61, a GOP higher-up now charged with possession and transmission of child pornography.

Rees is a party committeeman, though the Republican Party of Florida appears to have purged him from its directory of leaders (an archived listing from last August listing Rees is here.) He also helped oversee the GOP’s state budget in 2011, and was appointed to serve on several policy panels by then-Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican speaker of the Florida House. (A sparse user of Facebook, Rees excitedly updated his personal page in January 2011: “At Florida Inauguration for Governor Rick Scott, LT. Governor Jennifer Carroll and other members of the Cabinet — awesome time.”)

Rees until recently served as chairman of the board for the Foundation for Evangelism, which is associated with the United Methodist Church. (He continues to serve on the board.)

Just last month, Rees reportedly helped train other lay ministers at a retreat in Alabama. His lesson was titled “Living our Beliefs: The United Methodist Way.”

(h/t NW Florida Daily News)

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July 28th, 2011
Today in the Senate, I met with Senators Jon Kyl and Mark Kirk. The meeting is very useful because it shows that the alternative to Barack Obama is a collapse of all the programs of cooperation with Russia. Today, I had the impression that I was transported in a time machine back several decades, and in front of me sat two monsters of the Cold War, who looked at me not through pupils, but targeting sights.
Russia’s ambassador to NATO is none too pleased with US conservatives. Wait till you see what one of those conservatives said in response.
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March 8th, 2011
Zoom Florida’s new governor, Rick Scott, really loves Wal-Mart. First, he hired the company’s disaster management chief to head the state’s emergency department. Then, he told residents that the state’s jail system, among other things, should run more like the big-box chain. And yesterday, he used the store corporation as an example of why residents didn’t give three hoots about treatment of state workers, or anything else beyond their own naked self-interest: Scott said he saw a study last week (we’re checking to see where it came from) that showed the average government worker earns $9,000 more than the average private sector employee. “It doesn’t mean the study is right. There are so many studies that come out,” Scott said. “But if you just think about it on the private side, if you’re a taxpayer, almost no taxpayer has a pension plan anymore. Very few, because the private companies couldn’t compete. “Ninety-five percent of all Americans shop at Wal-mart at least once a year. When those Americans go shop there, they don’t say, ‘Gosh, I’m going to pay for that product because they have the best pension plan, or the best health care insurance or the nicest boss.’ They go based on price. “As taxpayers and as consumers, we go to price.” Translation: Shut up and be good customers, rubes. Classy guy.

Florida’s new governor, Rick Scott, really loves Wal-Mart. First, he hired the company’s disaster management chief to head the state’s emergency department. Then, he told residents that the state’s jail system, among other things, should run more like the big-box chain. And yesterday, he used the store corporation as an example of why residents didn’t give three hoots about treatment of state workers, or anything else beyond their own naked self-interest:

Scott said he saw a study last week (we’re checking to see where it came from) that showed the average government worker earns $9,000 more than the average private sector employee.

“It doesn’t mean the study is right. There are so many studies that come out,” Scott said. “But if you just think about it on the private side, if you’re a taxpayer, almost no taxpayer has a pension plan anymore. Very few, because the private companies couldn’t compete.

“Ninety-five percent of all Americans shop at Wal-mart at least once a year. When those Americans go shop there, they don’t say, ‘Gosh, I’m going to pay for that product because they have the best pension plan, or the best health care insurance or the nicest boss.’ They go based on price.

“As taxpayers and as consumers, we go to price.”

Translation: Shut up and be good customers, rubes.

Classy guy.

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March 6th, 2011
We have got to be very careful about putting an army on the ground in the Middle East.
Michele Bachmann, talking about Libya, without a hint of irony. In the same interview Sunday, she said some other dumb racist shit you might have heard about.
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Adam Weinstein. Writer. Editor. Social mediaite.
I started the Mother Jones Tumblr and finished your mother's pot roast.

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