Local Mayors, Transportation Planning Board Call for End to Elizabeth River Crossings Tolls

One of the worse fiascoes that former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his Republican cohorts in the Virginia General Assembly have inflicted on Hampton Roads is the "public-private partnership" that granted Elizabeth River Crossings ("ERC") the ability to fleece Hampton Roads commuters with ever increasing tolls in exchange for McDonnell and the Virginia GOP from avoiding tax increases - e.g. an increase in the gasoline tax - to pay for infrastructure that is a governmental responsibility. To call ERC greedy and rapacious is far too kind and their outrageous late fees ultimately forced the state of Virginia to demand reductions in tolls and late fees that quickly totaled in the thousands and thousands of dollars.  Compounding the distress to working class and poor commuters was the DMV's refusal to renew auto registrations until ERC receive its exorbitant demands which subjected commuters to traffic summonses as well. Now, a number of local mayors and members of the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Board Commonwealth of Virginia are demanding that the economy crushing tolls be lifted.  Such a move will required action by the Virginia General Assembly.  A piece in Channel 13 News looks at this issue and the need to rescind these tolls that screw the public while enriching private interests.  Here are excerpts: 

Portsmouth Mayor John Rowe said local leaders must find a way to reverse an agreement between Elizabeth River Crossings and the Commonwealth of Virginia before rising toll prices cripple the region's economy.

Rowe, Norfolk Mayor Kenny Alexander, Hampton Mayor Donnie Tuck and five others have formed a committee to study how the state could possibly change or back out of the agreement with ERC.

The committee was formed at a Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization meeting, where the mayors and others voiced concerns about toll prices and other aspects of the agreement. HRTPO director Bob Crum Jr. said he supports the new committee's opinion that something needs to change.

"Those tolls will continue to increase over time, I think the concern is what impact that will have," Crum said. "We need to investigate what options are on the table and work with the state and general assembly to get those things addressed."

Rowe said he feels like local leaders are now recognizing the tolls as a regional issue, and not just a "Portsmouth issue." An Old Dominion University study found Portsmouth lost about $8.8 million each year after the implementation of the tolls in 2015. 

However, Crum and Rowe said any changes would likely need to be made in Richmond via the general assembly. The current agreement was made between the Commonwealth of Virginia and ERC. Crum said it was not signed by the local city governments. 

Elizabeth River Crossings responded to statements from public officials that the contract needs to end. The company said in a statement that it assumed more than $4 billion in costs when it agreed to expand, renovate and maintain the Midtown Tunnel, Downtown Tunnel and MLK Freeway facilities.
 Crum said another section of the agreement between the state and the ERC is worrying for local governments. Due to a non-compete clause, ERC could claim damages and lost revenue when other transportation projects are completed within the region, requiring the state to pay compensation to ERC.

With the High Rise Bridge expansion underway and the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel expansion coming soon, Crum said the board is worried about additional costs or repercussions. He said this understanding provides the new committee additional motivation to find a way to end the current agreement between the state and the ERC.

Mark Warner Undoes Cuccinelli/McDonnell Effort to Shutter Clinics

One of the agendas of now felon, Bob McDonnell and Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli was to burden abortion and family planning clinics with hospital like requirements that would have forced many to close.  The effort was to supposedly "protect women" but other outpatient clinics performing even more dangerous and invasive procedures were exempt from the requirements.  As always, the Christofascsts' alleged justifications did not hide their anti-abortion and anti-family planning clinic goals.  Now, as the Washington Post reports, Attorney General Mark Herring has ruled that such clinics do not have to meet the excessive requirements.  Needless to say, the always evil Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation - Virginia's leading anti-gay hate group - has her panties in a wad. Here are highlights:

Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) ­sided Monday with abortion rights advocates seeking to free clinics from strict, hospital-style building standards, issuing a legal opinion that whipped up those on both sides of the polarizing issue.

Herring’s action reverses an opinion from his Republican predecessor, Ken Cuccinelli II, and put an issue that has long divided lawmakers back on the front burner.

The advisory opinion has no immediate effect on clinics currently operating, but it could influence the state Board of Health when members consider an overhaul of rules. On June 4, the board will review rules that require the commonwealth’s 18 existing abortion clinics to widen hallways, add parking spaces and make other costly building renovations.

Abortion rights groups say those changes are a blatant attempt to close clinics and reduce access to abortion in Virginia, while abortion opponents say the rules are needed to ensure safety for women and access for emergency personnel.

Monday’s opinion “supersedes and reverses incorrect advice” given to the Board of Health in 2012 by Cuccinelli, Herring spokesman Michael Kelly said. Democrats accused Cuccinelli of bullying the board into forcing existing clinics to conform to the rules.

“That advice — that design-and-construction standards had to apply to preexisting facilities — is not supported by the law and represented an anomaly in how the Board of Health has treated the facilities it regulates and the way that laws are interpreted in Virginia,” Kelly said.

The new opinion restores the Board of Health’s usual practice of making such standards apply only to new construction and major renovations, Kelly said.

“[I]t’s not surprising that the Attorney General is inserting his political agenda by ignoring the will of the legislature,” Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, said in a statement. “He has proven time and again that he believes he is not bound by the law.”

Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) said he agreed that the move was an end run around the legislature, adding: “Now he’s saying, ‘Screw you,’ again.”

But Herring accused Cuccinelli of bending the law to his political agenda when he advised board members against grandfathering existing clinics.

The Board of Health is expected to vote June 4 on the proposed rules in a showdown likely to draw out passionate advocates on both sides of the issue. The vote will trigger a review by McAuliffe and Herring as well as a 60-day public comment period culminating in a final vote sometime this fall.

The issue has a contentious history in Virginia. In early 2011, the General Assembly voted for, and McDonnell approved, a law that categorized facilities that perform five or more abortions a month as hospitals.

The Bob/Maureen McDonnell Soap Opera Continues

PHOTO - BOB BROWN/TIMES-DISPATCH

As the sentencing of former Governor and now convicted felon, Bob McDonnell approaches, the unseemly soap opera "family values" of the Virginia GOP continue to make the stomach turn.  Earlier in the week, as reported by the Richmond Times Dispatch, two of the McDonnell children, Jeanine McDonnell Zubowsky and Cailin Young, threw their mother under the bus in a letter to the Court asking for leniency for their father.  As a column in the same paper notes, however, all of the McDonnells were in on the take and showed a rapacious greed that reflects on the true "conservative Christian values" of the Virginia Republican establishment.  First, highlights on the trashing of Maureen McDonnell:

Two children of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell say his stunning downfall and conviction on public corruption charges can largely be attributed to the corrosive effects of just one person: Their mother.

Jeanine McDonnell Zubowsky and Cailin Young wrote in blunt — and at times scathing — letters to a federal judge that it was former first lady Maureen McDonnell's materialism and mental-health issues that derailed the rising political career of her husband. The letters of support for Robert McDonnell were part of a trove of 440 submitted by his attorneys, who are seeking leniency at his Jan. 6 sentencing in Richmond.
"My mom . . . has always been concerned about getting discounts or freebees," McDonnell Zubowsky wrote. "She hid her coordination with people for free or discounted things or services and she didn't communicate with my dad because she knew he would not approve. . . . The testimony about my mom was not just part of a defense strategy and was not an attempt to 'throw her under the bus,' but unfortunately, was the reality."

 The column in today's Times Dispatch gives a truer view of the matter.  Here are highlights:

One of the more dramatic moments of the Bob and Maureen McDonnell corruption trial was the testimony of an FBI agent who was asked by a prosecutor to identify item-by-item the Rolex wristwatch, golf equipment, designer clothes, shoes and handbags that Jonnie Williams Sr. showered on the former first family.
For more than a half-hour, the swag was paraded across the courtroom, handed by the bailiff to jurors for their examination. It was a display of legal theater that made clear the eye-popping, cash register-ringing scale of Williams’ beneficence.

Christmas, it seems, came almost every day for the McDonnells — all of them.

It’s a point overshadowed, if not altogether lost, by the orchestrated appeals of the five McDonnell children for leniency for their father. In letters to the federal judge who next week could send him to prison — 10 to 12 years for trading on his office, if the prosecution gets its way — the three daughters and twin sons, all recipients of Williams’ sometimes-garish largesse, say that Bob McDonnell doesn’t deserve to be locked away.

If it was OK for mom and dad to avail themselves of Williams’ generosity, then it was OK for the kids, too. Children learn from their parents, especially from their parents’ conduct. Some of the most powerful lessons from this are absorbed by children when parents don’t think the children are watching.

Privately, Bob McDonnell set a different example. There are few indications that, before the former first couple came under federal scrutiny, they or their children fully considered how unseemly it was to accept or solicit gift after gift after gift from a rich man looking for favors from the government that McDonnell led.  But maybe that’s because the family, in general, and McDonnell, in particular, didn’t think anyone would notice. 

Under Virginia law, it was up to McDonnell — and McDonnell, alone — to make public the goodies that he and his family harvested from Williams.  Two features of the ethics statutes allowed him to obscure, if not conceal, the gifts and sweetheart loans: First, the law relies on the official to police himself or herself. Second, that allows the official to determine whether a benefactor is a relative or personal friend. Gifts from either do not have to be disclosed.

Are not their [the McDonnell children] appeals to Spencer, while emotionally moving and emblematic of a deep devotion to their father, somewhat diminished by a troubling fact? They were a party to this tawdry enterprise.

Cailin’s 2011 wedding at the Executive Mansion was paid for, in part, with $15,000 from Williams. Daughter Jeanine and her husband took $10,000 from Williams as a wedding present, only returning it — as Jeanine testified in a scripted utterance at her parents’ trial — “after we realized he was a criminal.”

Sons Sean and Bobby were given golf clubs, a bag and shoes by Williams as well as occasional privileges at his exclusive country club outside Richmond. The twins, both of whom have had dust-ups with police over their after-hours conduct, resisted pressure from their father to return the equipment. They dismissed his concerns that it was inappropriate for them to accept it.

The "conservatives" in the Virginia GOP disparage gays and many others as "sinners" and "immoral."  Perhaps they need to take a good look at themselves in the mirror.  They are modern day Pharisees who daily exhibit behavior that makes the case for walking away from Christianity.

The GOP's Mug Shot Primary

When investigations of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell in "Giftgate" first began, the GOP pundits all claimed it was a partisan plot - some even in their delusions claimed that Obama was orchestrating the entire affair - but the multi-count conviction of Taliban Bob and his wife made it clear that there was fire where the GOP claimed there was smoke at most.  As the early phases of the 2016 jockeying begins among the would be GOP candidates, it is telling that so many of them are under criminal investigation at present.  Like McDonnell - and the Christofascists who make up so much of the hardcore GOP base - there seems to be a mindset that the rules apply to others.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the legal problems of some of the contenders.  Here are excerpts:

Why is the lineup of prospective GOP presidential candidates beginning to look like, well, a lineup?

Chris Christie went to campaign this week for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, putting the New Jersey governor in the company of a man who is in almost as much legal jeopardy as he is. Between them, the two would-be 2016 presidential nominees are the subjects of six investigations.

But Texas Gov. Rick Perry, another presidential aspirant, is far ahead of them in the mug-shot primary: He’s already under indictment on two felony counts related to abuse of power. And, speaking of felonies, former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, long considered presidential timber, was convicted on 11 corruption counts after his salacious trial this summer that disgraced him and his wife.

Democrats are trying to tie another prospective presidential candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, to a Republican contributor who was convicted this summer of witness tampering in a campaign-finance case; the governor had been subpoenaed to appear in the case but was never called.

Beyond that, the Republican governors of Iowa, Kansas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maine, South Carolina and New Mexico all face varying degrees of legal liability on matters ranging from influence peddling to the firing of whistleblowers. Completing the GOP version of a most-wanted list: John Rowland, the former governor of Connecticut, who was found guilty last month of conspiracy charges in a campaign-finance case. It was the second time he had been convicted on criminal charges.

This doesn’t necessarily mean governors, or other politicians, are more corrupt than they used to be; there has always been some sense of entitlement among elected leaders, a belief that the usual rules don’t apply to them. Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, adds that “unfathomable amounts of money flowing through the system” have increased the opportunity for misconduct, while the proliferation of media and electronic paper trails makes it more likely to get caught.

[T]here’s some rough justice that Republicans, who popularized this criminalization of politics in the 1990s [against Bill Clinton], now find at least three of their top presidential prospects being hoist with the GOP’s own petard. New Jersey’s Christie, of course, has Bridgegate and related troubles. The campaign of Wisconsin’s Walker is being investigated over allegedly illegal campaign finance coordinated with various conservative groups; a federal appeals panel ruled last month that prosecutors could proceed with the long-stalled investigation. Then there’s Perry . . . a grand jury has indicted Perry on charges carrying up to 109 years in prison combined.

Bob and Maureen McDonnell Convicted of Corruption

I hope Maureen REALLY enjoyed that dress!!

The Richmond Times Dispatch (as are other news outlets) is reporting that both Bob and Maureen McDonnell have been found guilty of criminal corruption earlier today.  This makes McDonnell the first Virginia governor in the Commonwealth's history to be convicted of a felony.  Part of me feels some sorrow for Bob and Maureen McDonnell who I have known for 20 years.  But another part of me feels no sorrow.  Why?  Because along the way in the pursuit of power, both of them sold their souls.  And not just for money.  Bob McDonnell's lust for power made him further the interests/agenda of vile groups like The Family Foundation and those who hate others based on their skin color or national origin.  None of those are things that a decent Catholic would ever do.  Here are highlights from the Dispatch article:

Bob McDonnell is the first Virginia governor convicted of a felony.

 A federal jury today convicted Virginia’s 71st governor and former first lady Maureen McDonnell on multiple counts in their corruption trial in U.S. District Court.

Bob McDonnell has been convicted on 11 of 13 counts.

Maureen McDonnell has been convicted on nine of 13 counts.

Both McDonnells sobbed openly, but quietly as the verdicts were read. Family members and supporters also wept openly.

Sentencing will be Jan. 6 at 10 a.m.

The Virginian Pilot also aptly notes:

It has been a precipitous fall for Bob McDonnell, who held elective office for 22 years, much of it as a state delegate from Virginia Beach, and as recently as two years ago was a rising star in national Republican politics.

I suspect that the McDonnells will appeal, but it looks like an uphill battle given the number of counts they were each convicted on.  So much for Virginia GOP family values.   Now we need to see Rick Perry and Scott Walker convicted of felonies!!

For McDonnell Jury, It’s Back to the Basics

Virginia's ongoing soap opera - i.e., the criminal corruption trial of Bob and Maureen McDonnell - has now moved into waiting mode much like the summer wait for the answer of who shot JR on the old Dallas series.  The case has gone to the jury which received over two hours of instructions from the presiding federal judge.  A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the waiting game which, no matter the result will leave Virginia looking like a corrupt banana republic politically.  Here are highlights:

“And with that, we will send you out to begin your deliberations,” said U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer, concluding — after 2 hours and 10 minutes Tuesday — his detailed instructions to jurors in the Bob and Maureen McDonnell corruption trial. “You take your time. It’s your business now.”

Moments later, as the jurors filed out of Spencer’s seventh-floor courtroom, the prosecutors, the defense lawyers and the accused rose in the customary gesture of respect for the seven men and five women whose decisions could lead to the once-unthinkable: a former Virginia governor and his wife behind bars.

To convict or acquit Bob and Maureen on any and all of 26 counts requires the agreement of all 12 jurors. An 8-4 vote won’t cut it. A unanimous vote is mandatory to find the McDonnells guilty or not guilty.

Also, the trial could yield multiple verdicts, muddying a case that prosecutors represented as a clear example of government-for-sale.

The jury could convict Bob and Maureen on some charges; deadlock on others. If there’s a hung jury on certain counts, Spencer could direct jurors to keep working. Were the jury unsuccessful, he could declare a mistrial on the outstanding counts. The verdict on resolved charges would stand. The U.S. Justice Department might attempt a do-over on the unsettled issues.

For instance, Bob could be convicted on a single count of bank fraud; specifically, failing to disclose loans from the protected-from-prosecution Jonnie Williams Sr. on a refi application for the McDonnells’ cash-hemorrhaging resort properties.

Maureen, alone, could be found guilty of obstructing a criminal investigation. After she had been questioned by state police in 2013 on her relationship with Williams, Maureen returned the $20,000 in designer clothing he bought for her in New York. The togs were accompanied by a note in which Maureen said she’d planned to give them back. The government says she was trying to mislead investigators.

The government, Spencer said in his instructions, is not required to produce a contract or expressed agreement to a conspiracy. Plus, it’s not necessary to prove the scheme was successful; unsuccessful schemes are illegal, too.

Further, this corruption case does not require, nor does it rely on, an explicit exchange of goods for services, the so-called quid pro quo. The law recognizes — and the courts have affirmed — that such a trade could be based on a knowing wink and nod.

As for the penalties the McDonnells could face, they’re tougher for bank fraud than corruption.

A conviction for false statements to a federally insured financial institution carries a sentence of up to 30 years and a $1 million fine.

Twenty years is the maximum prison term on each of the corruption charges: conspiracy to commit honest-services wire fraud; honest-services wire fraud; obtaining property under color of official right; conspiracy to obtain property under color of official right, and obstruction of an official proceeding. These offenses can also carry financial penalties.

All in all, this case has been a train wreck for Virginia, but especially for GOP's pretense of upholding "family values."

Bob McDonnell's "Crazy Wife" Defense Is Totally Unprecedented

As the Vatican continues to demonstrate its sense that it is above the law when it comes to the sexual abuse of children (see the prior post), in Richmond, Virginia, the criminal trial of Bob and Maureen McDonnell similarly shows the nasty reality of GOP "family values": sham marriages, unbridled greed, back stabbing, throwing one's spouse under the proverbial bus, and levels of dysfunction that are off the charts.  Perhaps I should not be surprised given what went on in the strong Republican neighborhood I lived in during the closeted period of my life.  Outwardly, everything was perfection with perfectly maintained homes and yards, but behind closed doors, some husbands beat their wives, many marriages were strained at best, and at least one husband was recently caught by one of his children having sex with a woman not much older than his children.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the culmination of all of this in Bob McDonnell's "crazy wife" legal defense scheme.  Here are highlights:

Over five weeks of testimony, jurors have heard a barrage of details about the McDonnells’ finances and about their interactions with a wealthy Virginia businessman, Jonnie Williams, from whom the couple is accused of taking $177,000 worth of gifts and loans in exchange for lending the credibility of the governor’s office to Williams’ dietary supplements company.

But without a doubt, the most engrossing aspect of the trial has been the revelations about the McDonnells’ marriage. In testimony, the governor painted a picture of his marriage veering so far into soap opera territory that pundits began referring to it as the “crazy wife” defense. Legal experts told TPM that was an unprecedented strategy to deploy in such a high-profile criminal case.

When the former governor the took the stand, he cast his wife as a mercurial thorn in his side — not to mention that of the entire Executive Mansion staff. Under questioning by the defense, various other witnesses described Maureen McDonnell as a hoarder, "diva-ish" and "pathologically incapable of taking any kind of responsibility." One former aide testified that the governor was "in denial about Mrs. McDonnell’s mental capacity."

Defense attorneys are hoping that all this testimony proves to jurors that communication between the McDonnells was too strained for them to have been able to conspire together to promote Williams’ company.

Barbara “Biz” Van Gelder, a criminal defense attorney with Dickstein Shapiro, said it’s not unusual in a criminal case for one spouse to claim that he or she wasn’t aware of what the other spouse was doing, particularly in regards to finances. For example, a couple may share a joint account that just one spouse manages.

But “this is much different. This is saying not that they do that portion of the shared work, but this is like, ‘I’m not even talking to them so I don’t know,’” she told TPM.

Julie Rose O’Sullivan, a law professor at Georgetown and a former federal prosecutor, agreed that the McDonnell defense’s “crazy wife” theory was a departure from cases she’s seen.

“The more that he describes his wife as crazy, then it begs the question of well, if your wife was crazy, why didn’t you stop her?” he told TPM. “Why didn’t you shut her down? Like many defenses, this one is also a two-edged sword.”

Certain gifts that McDonnell himself received from the wealthy businessman, such as golfing trips and a ride in Williams’ Ferrari, don't quite fit that narrative (The Washington Post has an excellent graphic visualizing all the luxury goods, vacations and loans given to each member of the McDonnell family for reference). In those cases, McDonnell acknowledged that he shouldn’t have accepted the gifts but argued that Williams’ largess never earned him more than basic constituent access to the governor’s office.

So how might the "crazy wife" defense shake out once the trial goes to jury?

Cowan believes that the broken marriage story may not be enough to convince a jury that the McDonnells were unable to conspire to promote Williams' company.

"If at the end of the day the jury says, you did enough, you knew enough, then this is really not only a trainwreck for a political career, it’s also an incredible trainwreck to publicly display all of this for naught," Van Gelder said.

The Myth of "The Virginia Way" and the McDonnell Corruption Trial

Having lived half my life now in Virginia I am well acquainted with what often is a pretense of civility - especially in politics - when behind the veneer things are down right cut throat and dirty.  No one is more skilled in knifing you in the back than genteel Virginia belles and gentleman.  Feigned courtliness doesn't lessen the pain of the knife slipping between one's ribs.   One positive aspect of the Bob and Maureen McDonnell criminal corruption trial is that it has perhaps once and for all destroyed the myth of "the Virginia Way" - the myth that civility and the best interests of the public are forever foremost in the minds of Virginia politicians.   The truth is that Virginia politics is a snake pit where greed and seeking advantage through any means are the norm.  A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the issue.  Here are excerpts:

No verdict is necessary in the Bob and Maureen McDonnell corruption case to know that the wrenching scandal is certain to change Virginia politics. It will probably get worse before it gets better.

The historic five-week trial will lay waste to the notion of the “Virginia way,” a quaint concept that elections and governance are conducted with mannered dignity by men and women who — because they have an agonizing sense of public mission — know what’s best for the rest of us.

This idea has been on life support for years, weakened by the rise of two-party competition, beginning in 1969 with the election of the state’s first modern Republican governor, Linwood Holton. The GOP wanted in on the big feed that had been reserved almost exclusively for Democrats for most of the 20th century.

Having used the poll tax and literacy tests to disenfranchise African-Americans and poor whites, Democrats kept the electorate small and manageable — and largely in the dark about their continuing manipulations of the system.

 

Favor-seeking and back-scratching — acts that a federal jury could criminalize by finding the McDonnells guilty of trading booty and bling for state support of a disputed dietary supplement — have long been the rule in Richmond.

But it wasn’t called that. Rather, it was known as “sound policy,” a way to preserve the state’s business-friendly climate — and, by extension, the control of cliquish conservative, often-prosperous politicians who did the corpocracy’s bidding.

This arrangement may have helped profits, but it didn’t always help Virginia’s people. . . . Politics was a members-only activity, the prerogative of the few. It was intentionally opaque. If the personal became public, it was dealt with swiftly and sternly.

It’s no wonder, then, that Garrett Epps, who famously chronicled the clash between Old and New Virginia in his 1977 novel, “The Shad Treatment,” now refers to his home state as the “Banana Dominion.”

Fast-forward to 2014: Not only have Virginians been told for more than a year by newspapers and prosecutors about the alleged misdeeds of the McDonnells on behalf of the fully immunized Jonnie Williams Sr., Bob and Maureen also have — as the cornerstone of their defense — shared tawdry details of their life together apart. It may be TMI — too much information — but get used to it.

Political candidates have long bared their souls, but usually according to a script. The idea is to establish a bond with voters; that they’re inclined to support the candidate who is most like them.

McDonnell mastered this. Running for attorney general in 2005 and governor four years later, he was an easygoing, typical suburban kid from Fairfax County, talking about kitchen-table issues with friends and family. Now we know the conversation apparently was conducted with flying plates.

In Virginia, political parties and the political press will now feel compelled to more closely vet candidates and officials. But the magnified scrutiny will likely extend to those who usually receive little or none: spouses and children.

The picture that emerged of the McDonnells — one painted by the prosecution and, to a lesser degree, the defense — is of a sprawling family for which gift-taking was a full-time enterprise. Living in the fishbowl that is the Executive Mansion, they availed themselves of Williams’ gaudy largesse: a Rolex watch, designer togs, five-figure checks as wedding presents, weekends at posh resorts, golf outings and sports equipment. The McDonnells chose not to notice that eventually the public would.

Next year, Virginians decide control of the House of Delegates and state Senate. Partisan redistricting will protect many seats, particularly those of Republicans, whose brand has been badly dinged by the McDonnell mess. Their tailor-made districts can’t protect them from shame.

Kool-Aid Drinking Republicans Go Nuts Over McDonnell Gay Priest Story

I guess it was bound to happen given the lunacy that now is the norm within the Republican Party as a whole and the Republican Party of Virginia in particular.  What am I talking about?  The reactions from the reality free folks at Bearing Drift, a conservative Virginia GOP blog , and the all too typical anonymous commentators who attack me yet lack the guts to reveal their own identities.  Insanity and cowardice seem to be the norm for these folks.  

At Bearing Drift there is a tirade under the headline "Virginia Democrat Bloggers Spew Homophobic Hatred" that accusing Democrats and "liberal bloggers" - which seemingly includes me - of being anti-gay because notice has been taken of Bob McDonnell's hypocrisy when it comes to (i) the "sanctity of marriage" and (ii) the acceptability of gay sex.  In 2003, McDonnell led a lynch mob of Virginia Republicans against then circuit court judge Verbena Askew over unsubstantiated claims that she had sexually harassed another woman.  McDonnell's crusade cause Askew her seat on the bench and first earned McDonnell the nickname "Taliban Bob."  It was during that lynch mob circus that McDonnell was asked if he had ever violated Virginia's sodomy statute to which he responded "not that I recall."    Here some of the drivel:

It’s sad when Democrats who pretend to care about their supporters show their true colors. That’s what Lowly at Blue Virginia did today, launching a hate-filled post targeting a priest who visited a “bawdy place” in the 1990s with a 41-year old man because he had the gall to allow Bob McDonnell to stay in his rectory during Obama’s political trial against him.

But it does show you an insight into the liberal extremist mind. Democrat bloggers, especially Lowly, must not really like gay people. They need their votes, and the fact that they don’t like religion makes gay people social “brothers in arms” with hatemongers like Lowly, but in reality they only use gay people to shore up their own power. 

Note how McDonnell's criminal indictment is described as "Obama's political trial against him."  These folks are insane.   

A cowardly comment on this blog - which will not be given the honor of being published attacks me in part as follows:

Dredging up an incident from a dozen years ago and making the priest the bad guy just seems so petty. He was not even convicted; the charges were dismissed.

Moreover, the writer turns the situation into one of merely being in a park after hours.  The cretin misses the point that the issue is not the priest (although he did plead guilty in a plea deal which is not what one does if there isn't a good chance of conviction) but rather McDonnell's hypocrisy.  Taliban Bob only wants to know gays when they can help him throw his wife under the bus.  He certainly had other option as to where he could stay if he found the marital home to chilly. . 

Bob McDonnell Is Now Living With Catholic Priest Busted For Public Gay Sex

The night time soap opera aspects of the Bob and Maureen McDonnell criminal corruption trial just continue to go off the charts.  That McDonnell was ever seen as a rising star in the Republican Party shows just how bankrupt that party has become.  Now, on top of everything else, we find out that Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell has moved out of the family home and is living with a Catholic priest who was busted in Norfolk for public gay sex.  Seriously, it would be hard to make up stuff this good!  As Joe Jervis notes, one of McDonnell's first actions as Governor was to strip LGBT people of protection under a statewide anti-discrimination executive order, declaring that there is no evidence of such discrimination.  The Contributor has more details on this soap opera:

The following story most definitely falls into the "you can't make this shit up" category. Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, now on trial for corruption as governor (and busy throwing his wife under the bus while rolling back and forth over her a few times, proving he's a complete cad as well as a sleazeball), has moved out of his home with Maureen and moved in with a priest: Rev. Wayne Ball of St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Richmond. Well, how about we meet the good Reverend (note: thanks to Ben "Not Larry Sabato" Tribbett for the tip on this one).

Yeah, it's this same guy.

The Rev. Wayne L. Ball, a Norfolk priest who pleaded guilty late last year to a misdemeanor sex offense, has been reassigned to St. John's Catholic Church in Highland Springs, according to The Catholic Virginian, a biweekly diocesan newspaper. The move is effective June 2.

Ball, 42, has served as pastor of Norfolk's Holy Trinity Catholic Church since 2000. The current pastor at St. John's, the Rev. David V. McGuire, will replace Ball at Holy Trinity.

In December, Ball pleaded guilty in Norfolk General District Court to the misdemeanor charge of frequenting a bawdy place. Norfolk police arrested Ball and a 41-year-old Richmond man on the night before Thanksgiving in a parked car in a Norfolk park. The judge continued Ball's case until July 8 and will dismiss the charge if the priest has no further criminal problems and completes 80 hours of community service by June 3. The man in the car with Ball received a similar deal.

Anyway, this is the priest - Wayne Ball - who "Homophobe Bob" McDonnell is now living with in a rectory in Richmond. Just when you thought this trial couldn't get any more soap opera-ish or bizarre...

P.S. Again, let me just emphasize that I don't have any problem whatsoever with Rev. Ball being gay. I do have a problem with Bob McDonnell spending his career telling everybody what's right and wrong sexually as well as who they can and can't marry; voting for anti-gay legislation; and generally being a homophobic jerk; and then moving in with a gay priest after moving out with his wife Maureen.

Bob McDonnell Blatant Hypocrisy

In political campaigns from the time he first ran for the House of Delegates, Bob McDonnell has always sold himself as a champion of "family values" and shamelessly prostituted himself to Christofascist organizations like The Family Foundation.   He has condemned gays and blathered about the "sanctity of marriage" and the biblical model of "one man and one woman" even though the Old Testament model for marriage is polygamy.  McDonnell has always been a huckster pandering to those who need someone to hate and look down upon so that they can feel better about their own small minded, often miserable lives.  The ongoing criminal corruption trial in Richmond has underscored just how phony McDonnell as been in the public persona he has marketed.  A piece in the Daily Progress looks at the fraud that McDonnell has proven himself to be all these years.  Here are excerpts:

"The real enemies of the traditional family (are) materialism, irresponsibility, feminism, lust, and ultimately selfishness." - Bob McDonnell

We've been told for years by people like Gov. Bob McDonnell that allowing homosexuals to marry would mark the beginning of the end for Virginia's families and their values. Ironically, while we wait for the Supreme Court to rule on gay marriages, McDonnell is doing a fine job of destroying his own.

Whether Bob McDonnell's behavior as governor was legal or not will be decided by a jury, but no matter the verdict, receiving over $150,000 in loans and "gifts" from entrepreneur Jonnie Williams tarnished the public image of the office. With his testimony in the trial, McDonnell seems willing to break the covenant he made with his wife Maureen, and tarnish the image of his marriage, in an attempt to avoid prison. McDonnell's defense in the couple's public corruption trial appears to be centered on painting a picture of his wife Maureen as a nutbag who he was forced to placate while making apologies for her during his time in the Governor's mansion. 

Bob McDonnell has been running on the issue of "family values" even before he was a candidate for any office. In his Master's degree dissertation at Regent University, McDonnell laid out the case for a Republican campaign on family issues as the best way to lead the country and win elections."

The traditional family is the cornerstone upon which Western civilization has been built, but changes in demographics, ideology, and political philosophy during this century have resulted in the decline in the strength of the family institution. … Republicans must stay consistently committed to their principles, communicate more effectively with the American public, and take bold action to restore the family to a position of strength in modern society."

During the Governor's race, McDonnell distanced himself from some of the more controversial statements he made in the paper, but his devotion to marriage never wavered. During his decade in the House of Delegates, he was a patron of a "Covenant Marriage" bill which would indicate he considered his own marital bonds to be stronger than a piece of government-issued paper.

Bob McDonnell failed his office and the people of Virginia. He's brought shame to himself and to our state. He can be forgiven for those mistakes, he's a human being. But failing his Covenant to his wife in an attempt to escape justice is indefensible. No matter how you vote, ask yourself if you would do the same?

Sadly, I believe that McDonnell is typical of the "family values" politicians in the Virginia GOP. They fear the Christofascists that they helped to empower in the Party and now lie and prostitute themselves simply to stay in office.  It is they, not gays and "liberals" who have no values, no integrity and no honor. 

Bob and Maureen McDonnell - A Case Study of Virginia GOP "Family Values"

While thousands were at Norfolk's Town Point Park supporting marriage equality in Virginia, the federal criminal trial of former GOP governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen continues to provide a case study in the type of marriages the Virginia GOP and the hate merchants at The Family Foundation want to protect.  Candidly, there seems to be little "sanctity of marriage" in the McDonnell's marriage and all too many of the marriages I witnessed during the "straight" phase of my life in a outwardly perfect high end neighborhood in Virginia Beach.  A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the ongoing spectacle of  back stabbing and throwing one's spouse under the bus that is one of the main theme of the McDonnell trial.  Here are excerpts:

Former aides Mary-Shea Sutherland, Sarah Scarbrough and Phil Cox and sister-in-law Mo Carney McDonnell chucked Maureen McDonnell under the bus. Then, husband Bob backed over her — gently.

The thread running through the testimony of prosecution and defense witnesses is that Maureen is volatile and insecure, if not unstable.

Depending on who’s asking the questions or who’s answering them, she embodies the rage of Lady Macbeth, the emotional frailty of Blanche DuBois, the blonde ambition of Eva Peron and the subtly of Snooki.

For 20 days, Maureen has quietly endured a carefully scripted trashing. Her freedom could depend on it.

Her husband of 38 years, the man with whom she held hands in public as a wife, first lady and co-defendant, now barely speaks to her. As the former governor squirmed past Maureen in Judge James Spencer’s courtroom Friday, they repelled each other — much as magnets do when their like poles are placed together.

Bob knows he’s in serious trouble; that getting out of it is serious business. He’s been in tight spots before — but politically. Each time, he successfully extracted himself on the strength of his on-cue earnestness, his talent for parsing words, and his deeply held belief that if he says something often enough, people will actually believe him.

There was Bob’s artful use in 2003 of a phrase heard often during his three days of testimony this past week on damning details of his backroom dealings with the protected-from-prosecution Jonnie Williams Sr.: “Not that I can recall.”

Eleven years ago, when Bob was chairman of the House courts committee, that was his response when asked whether he — as a married man with five children — had violated a since-scrapped prohibition on sodomy that was a factor in the doomed reappointment of a female judge accused by another woman of sexual harassment.

Possibly facing decades in prison and millions of dollars in fines, Bob — in his latest and riskiest charm offensive — is relying on these time-proven skills. But he is throwing in — or is that throwing out? — Maureen for good measure.

Bob lives for another day, but chivalry is dead.

This requires piling on Maureen — and requires that she take it. A reminder of that will be how closely, if at all, her lawyers question Bob. They’ll have a shot at him starting Monday, followed by prosecutors. And the feds are certain to have a slew of questions.

Further, Maureen’s continuing silence is interpreted as consent to the defense’s argument that she and Bob, their marriage having collapsed, were utterly incapable of communication.

Ergo, they couldn’t possibly conspire to trade on Virginia’s governorship for at least $177,000 in gifts, trips, cash and loans from Williams. A rich man, he was angling for state support of a supposed, tobacco-derived cure-all that, he hoped, would make him even richer.

McDonnell driving Jonnie Williams' Ferrari

VIRGINIA: Anti-Gay Norfolk Circuit Clerk Files Appeal with Supreme Court

George E. Schaefer III - the face of anti-gay hate

One thing the local Hampton Roads gay community needs to do is come up with a plan to make sure George E. Schaefer III, the clerk of the Norfolk Circuit Court, is defeated the next time he runs for re-election.  If the region is to prosper and move forward in a changing world, the last thing we need is a raging bigot in charge of the circuit court of the area's largest city.  The same holds true in Prince William County where reportedly Michele McQuigg stands for re-election next year.  Typically, circuit court clerk elections are low profile, but these two individuals demonstrate what can happen when the wrong individuals hold these positions.  I stand ready to write campaign contribution checks to any credible candidates who challenge these douche bags.

In his filing yesterday seeking an appeal from the ruling of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Schaefer argues that the lower federal courts have “subverted” the Supreme Court’s decision last year in United States v. Windsor.  If anything is perverted, its religious extremists and bigots like Schaefer and McQuigg who want to subvert the U.S. Constitution and inflict their poisonous religious beliefs on all Virginians (and who have perverted Christianity into something hideous).  Adding to the hypocrisy is the fact that Schaefer is represented by the former law firm of former governor Bob McDonnell now under federal corruption charges who has shown the true face of GOP family values. The following is Schaefer's basic claim:

Contrary to these mistaken decisions, the Fourteenth Amendment does not override “

state sovereign choices” about whether to adopt same sex marriage.

If this reasoning is correct, then Loving v. Virginia was wrongly decided and the bigotry of the majority can strip minorities of their civil rights as American citizens.  It goes without saying that Schaefer is a Republican. I always find it amazing who the opponents of gay marriage continue to make the same arguments as their segregationist forefathers.  I also have to question how their legal counsel can file such disingenuous arguments.    SCOTUS Blog has details on the filing:

Arguing that lower federal courts have “subverted” the Supreme Court’s decision last year on same-sex marriage, a Virginia court clerk on Friday filed his own petition – the second filing seeking a ruling on the constitutionality of that state’s ban on such marriages and the fourth on the basic constitutional issue.  The filing may complicate the Court’s chances of promptly considering that issue.

The new document was filed by lawyers for George E. Schaefer III, who is the circuit court clerk for the city of Norfolk.  He has been taking part in the Virginia case since it began, and he is now defending the ban, after state officials opted not to do so.  Already pending at the Court are another petition from Virginia, one from Utah, and one from Oklahoma.  Another is expected soon from Virginia, to be filed by a different clerk.


On Wednesday, the Court blocked the issuance of licenses for same-sex marriages in Virginia pending the filing of a petition by the other clerk who is defending the ban, Michele B. McQuigg of Prince William County.  Her petition is being prepared now by her lawyers, who may file it within the next week or so.

In the other two Virginia filings, one by the state attorney general and now by the Norfolk clerk, each claimed that it was the proper vehicle for the Court to review the validity of the Virginia ban.  But the two are on slightly different procedural timetables within the Court, and that will be true as well for the McQuigg petition when it is filed.

The Windsor decision “taught that state citizens are free to make up their own minds about this issue by exercising their ‘historic and essential authority to define the marital relation,’” the filing said, quoting from that ruling.

Perhaps someone should buy Schaefer a set of KKK robes since he in making a KKK like argument and applying it to gays.  Just a thought.  As I said, Schaefer needs to be challenged and defeated if he runs for reelection.