But what began with a bang is ending with something closer to a whimper. All three of those governors have been forced to scale back their expectations, to varying degree, as the push of conservative philosophy gave way to the pull of political reality.

All three found that praise from the conservative movement in Washington meant nothing to furious state legislators of both parties. And in the end, along with other conservative Republican governors, the three submitted letters in recent days asking to be eligible for federal funds, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget confirmed.

“We’ve tried to compromise in a variety of different ways and now we’ve gotten to … a position well past the halfway mark,” Sanford told POLITICO in an interview, conceding that, “I got beaten up pretty bad on it.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21086.html

http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=14305

A liberal Fox News regular received a death threat and a slew of hate mail after calling Republicans a “one trick dog” on Fox Business Channel Tuesday.

Snip…

Emails provided to Raw Story display a torrent of ire from those who felt personally insulted by the Air America host’s choice of words. Out of privacy, Raw Story has withheld the emailers’ names

“Mike Papantonio,” wrote one listener. “May you die a horrible death from brain cancer you frigging scumbag [sic].”

“Better hope you’re on a bail-out list when you start feeling the pain that the great-half-african icon, y’all put up there in Our face, falters again, and again, there won’t be enough stimulus to keep your sad voices on the air,” wrote another.

“Hey Mike, too funny!” typed a third. “Saw you on Neil Cavuto today. What a frigging communist you are and now we all know it. The more of you who speak out, the easier it is for we Americans to stop you from finishing the job of communizing America. Keep up the good work. Ha!!!”

A fourth was terse: “You frigging treasonous pig.”

Others reflected a more general dissatisfaction.

“Your encounter with the guest commentator was bizarre,” one emailer wrote. “Do you have any idea of how absurd and actually a bit nutty you looked. Your rants were outrageous but I guess that was your ploy so you would not have to answer his question which was quite simple. You should set yourself up to be the poster child for the ultra liberal side of the Dems with all of that anger and ranting and name calling.”

Mike Papantonio “is extremely rude and so abrasive. I was shocked at his appearance on a certain news show. I am a Democrat, however, I am an American first and strongly oppose his going on national television and calling fellow Americans (Republicans) ‘dogs’ among other names.”

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/08/strike-back-at-tax-cheat-tim-geithner/

Defacement of Currency

Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Defacement of currency in such a way that it is made unfit for circulation comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service. Their mailing address is:

United States Secret Service
950 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20223.

The United States Secret Service web address is http://www.secretservice.gov.

In an interview with Hotline, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) said the Republican party will have to be come an “insurgency” to counter Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and added that the Taliban can serve as “a model”:

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

When pressed to clarify, Sessions said he was not comparing the House Republican caucus to the Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalist group. “I simply said one can see that there’s a model out there for insurgency,” Sessions said before being interrupted by an aide.

Sessions made a similar analogy last week at the House Republicans’ retreat, saying that Republicans “need to get over the idea that they’re participating in legislation and ought to start thinking of themselves as ‘an insurgency’ instead.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/05…gop-insurgency/