By Debbie Schlussel
While I was away this past week in observance of the last of the Jewish holidays, the biggest campaign flap in the news was the $150,000 the Republican National Committee spent on exorbitant designer clothes (and hair and make-up) for Sarah Palin, her family (husband Todd got expensive designer suits), and future BabyDaddy Levi Johnson (also got a suit).
Remember, you already heard about this story a a week earlier on this site, when I wrote about how $10,000 alone was spent on Palin’s Republican National Convention wardrobe.
But while the issue has been used against her, that’s not the issue. It wasn’t her decision to buy these clothes, it was the McCain campaign’s decision. They underestimated America, believing that we’d judge Palin and family poorly if they dressed like the average middle Americans they are.

Sarah Palin in Red Leather Designer Jacket
Wrong. We’d admire that, and it would give the McCain campaign another point to make when the liberal media ultimately denigrated her average American wardrobe, as they predictably would have. Like a lot of us who aren’t wealthy, the Wall Street Journal early on reported that Palin bought clothes for herself and her family at upscale second-hand stores. And she also bought fashionable shoes from youthful line “Naughty Monkey”, which–while designed for 20-somethings–were inexpensive but hip. Both of these choices are economics-based and were good omens for the kinds of spending choices she’d continue to make. But the McCain campaign took those away, deciding in an elitist way that the Palin clan needed to look “expensive” and “polished” instead of middle American.
And, as I pointed out when I wrote about the clothes a while ago, they spent money that could have gone for ads in states where McCain is borderline. Buying designer duds from “Needless Markup” (Neiman Marcus) when you’ve accepted public-funding limits on your Presidential campaign but your opponent hasn’t, is bad strategy. And, again, not a Palin move, but a Team McCain misstep.
It came back to bite ’em with a half-week of negative stories against the campaign.
Remember, you heard it here first.

By Debbie Schlussel
On weekends when there aren’t a lot of new movies to review, I post reviews of releases you can rent and see in the comfort of your own home. Again, because of lots of stuff to do before the Jewish Sabbath on Friday, I didn’t get to a lot of things. And this review is one of them.
“The Final Patient” is a great thriller by the independent Mainardi producing team, Angelo Films. Jerry Mainardi directed this cool, different movie and co-wrote it with brother Michael Mainardi. I’ve been meaning to review it for a while, but time got the best of me.
A lot of independent producing teams send me their low-budget movies to review, and usually, I don’t post reviews because they’re not good movies. This, on the contrary, was a completely refreshing different take on small town, middle America life, and the eccentricities of a retired local doctor, who develops legendary superhuman strength. Has he discovered the “fountain of youth”? And what’s up with his elusive wife?

Other than the largely no-name cast, it’s hard to tell this well-done production is low budget, even though the Mainardis (incidentally political conservatives) tell me the budget was literally a shoestring one. The only name in this movie is that of star Bill Cobbs, whose name you might not recognize, but whose face and great acting skills have been in countless major films you’ve seen. This talented Black character actor was a great choice to play the country doctor who is the subject of a curious former patient and his med school colleague.
The story of this movie is different and new. And, while it’s a little slow, it is a relaxing and, at the same time, exciting thriller, whose direction will keep you guessing and whose ending is not predictable and nicely ambiguous. Also, a lot of great lines and quotables from the movie, like in this scene:

From Crackle: THE FINAL PATIENT

But, say the producers:

We’ve had some difficulties getting traction, probably because we left out the nudity, graphic violence and foul language.

Yes, the movie thankfully and refreshingly leaves these things out, but I didn’t even notice because I was engrossed in the story–only the case in a good movie with a strong script and plot.
The movie was shot entirely on location in rural Pennsylvania–you know the area that Congressman John Murtha is now saying is racist. But in this movie, even though the main character is Black as is his wife, race does not enter the equation. It’s just a matter of fact that doesn’t play a part in the movie. And that’s the way things should be.
I enjoyed watching this movie, and it’s a great escape for anyone looking to rent something different and unhyped. Although this movie hasn’t gotten a lot of exposure, the 2005 flick is available at most movie rental retailers, Walmart, and online. And it was a selection at a prominent movie festival.
Watch the trailer:

I can’t wait for more movies from these guys. They do the work that some Americans–ie., Hollywood–won’t do: make good movies.
THREE REAGANS

By Debbie Schlussel
Was extremely busy on Friday and didn’t get a chance to post a lot of things, including my weekly movie reviews. And since–because of Jewish Holiday scheduling conflicts–I did not screen “High School Musical 3” or “Pride and Glory”, I figured you aren’t missing much. Actually, I never saw the first or second “High School Musical” flicks, so I didn’t bother asking about the screening for the third installment because then I’d have to watch those, and life is simply to short to waste on that.
Unfortunately, I did go see this movie, which did not have a press screening, and I don’t wonder why:
* “Rachel Getting Married“: One of the worst movies of the year and a complete waste of my–and your–time. Hollywood apparently feels it doesn’t put out enough New Age melodramatic crap, so they brought us this cinematic version of “Oy.”

Or someone wanted to give their talentless hacks–at both acting, music, and wedding party planning–exposure, so they wrote this movie around it. Either way, there are only two possible reasons this movie got made: 1) the person who wrote it has the last name “Lumet” (Jenny Lumet) and is apparently a relative of the talented director Sidney Lumet; or 2) someone needed a large business loss tax deduction before the end of 2008.
And it’s a great example of how Hollywood can’t come up with anything original, even in the crappy melodramatic, bad wedding movie genre. Last year, there was another, even more crappy movie about a similarly mentally screwed-up sister who similarly sabotages her similarly New-Aged sister’s wedding plans at a fancy East Coast home. That torture session was called “Margot at the Wedding” (read my review), one of 2007’s worst movies.
The “plot”–if you can call it that: A drug addict, played by Anne Hathaway, who has been in and out of various rehab facilities for the last ten years, returns to her New Age, wealthy Whitebread Connecticut family’s home for her sister’s New Age, interracial, Indian-themed wedding to a Black man. Amidst all this, we’re treated to fleeting–but not fleeting enough, unfortunately–scenes of Indian and other Bhaghwan Shree Rajneesh guru types and speeches–and performances by talentless no-name musical (un)”talents”.
Hathaway’s character is incredibly needy of attention and disrupts a lot of the wedding festivities and plans with her acerbic comments, speeches, and antics . . . and she sleeps with the best man, also a recovering addict, within an hour of meeting him. Oh, and Debra Winger, back in movies at age 53, is her mother. We’re also treated to a lot of melodrama, screaming, yelling, whining, fighting between characters we don’t give a damn about, and two hours of wishing we’d walked out of the theater earlier.
Blechhhhh. See, I knew you wouldn’t miss my movie reviews, this weekend.
FOUR MARXES

By Debbie Schlussel
Occasionally in the liberal mainstream media, you’ll see a quote in which someone using ebonics or some other incorrect form of grammar and speech is quoted word for word.
It used to be a pet peeve of mine. I used to think that if a reporter quotes someone in a news story as saying, for example, “He do it,” instead of “He did it”, that showed that the reporter was racist and mocking the uneducated person he was quoting, usually a minority. I thought the only person who should be quoted that way is the guy from the ephemeral XFL, “He Hate Me”, since it was on his jersey.
But I long ago changed my mind on this. Accuracy is important. And a reporter quoting improper English as it was uttered by the utterer is, in fact, accuracy. We get to read or hear what the person actually said in a news story and not what a liberal, agenda-laden reporter wants us to think they said.
What Do They Have in Common? . . .

Terry Bradshaw, He Hate Me & Michelle Hussein Obama
That brings me to Michael Hiestand, the “Sports on TV” columnist for USA Today. Last Sunday, I was watching “FOX NFL Sunday”, and I heard Terry Bradshaw–whom I like, as I find him funny and entertaining–utter one of the sayings that is another thing that gets on my nerves. In talking about the NFL raising the face value of Superbowl tickets to $1,000, he said, “They could care less” about fans.
But that’s improper. It’s not good English. The correct phrase is, “They couldn’t care less”, or “they could NOT care less”. If they could care less, that makes the opposite of your point. It means that they do care a little bit–that they care more than the least amount they could care.
But I didn’t think anything of it because, hey, it’s a football show AND it’s Terry Bradshaw. We know he didn’t get into college because of his Einsteinian mind. We know he’s a football legend, not a rocket scientist (or as Terry might say, a “rocket surgeon”). And in any event, it’s hardly his biggest offense–his biggest offense would likely be his naked butt on my movie screen in a really bad movie, “Failure to Launch“, the awful vision of which I still can’t erase from my mind.
But, then, Monday came around. And I read Michael Hiestand’s “Keeping Score” column in USA Today. In it, he doctored, er . . . “polished” Terry Bradshaw’s quote to read correctly: “They couldn’t care less.” But that’s not what Terry said. He clearly said, “They could care less”. Cleaning it up for Terry isn’t journalism. It’s changing what was actually said, and it isn’t accurate reporting.
Yes, I know, it’s only a football pre-game show, produced by the talented (and very nice) Scott Ackerson. But I’m not nitpicking here–the problem is that this doesn’t just happen on the sports pages. It happens on your news pages. Liberal mainstream media reporters change what was said to make their favored candidates and other subjects of news stories look better. They “polish” the quotes. That’s fraudulent journalism, and it’s unethical. But it goes on all the time, and it’s yet another reason you can’t believe what you read and what’s “reported.”
They did this with Michelle Hussein Obama when she said she’d never been proud of America before her husband looked like he’d become President. Mainstream media accounts added the word “really,” as in “I’ve never been really proud of my country before Barack . . . .”, as if she’d been proud before but not “really” proud. But that’s not what she said, just like we were given a sanitized, cleaned-up version of what Terry Bradshaw said. They–the mainstream media reporters–tried to doctor it for her, but fortunately, online video didn’t lie like they did.
Michael Hiestand should have quoted Terry Bradshaw, thus:
“Do you think this league cares whether fans have to pay for something overpriced in a bad economy? They could care less [sic].”
The latin “sic” term is used–or, at least, used to be–by reporters to denote improper English or an error in speech.
Sadly, instead of that, these days, liberal reporters just change the quote to make their buddies and friends look better.
I e-mailed Hiestand, asking him about this. But, predictably, he didn’t respond:

Michael:
I have a question regarding your Sports on TV column, today. You quote Terry Bradshaw as saying “They couldn’t care less,” when actually he uttered the incorrect, “They could care less.” Why did you correct his improper English and inaccurately quote him, instead of using his exact quote and the “[sic]” notation?
Debbie Schlussel

I like Michael Hiestand. His column and writing are always interesting and entertaining.
And he’s not the first mainstream media journalist to doctor quotes for grammar, and in the case of far too many other reporters, an agenda.
That’s the problem.

By Debbie Schlussel
When I first wrote, back in 2006 about Barack Hussein Obama’s absentee Muslim father and how he desperately wanted to please him, I was mocked by liberals around the net and the media for it (and by some ignorant conservatives). I wrote:

So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian, and even if he despised the behavior of his father (as Obama said on Oprah); is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam?

But this was not pop psychology. It’s human nature. Not only was I right, but, now, historians agree with me.
Apparently, history favors an Obama history . . . but it’s not exactly the kind of history anyone yearns for. And his absentee Muslim father–who abandoned him and his mother–has a lot to do with it.

Wall Street Journal “Work & Family” columnist Sue Shellenbarger interviewed several authors, historians, and biographers of our nation’s Presidents. They say that the families that have produced American Presidents are dysfunctional, with eccentric, controlling mothers and absentee fathers.
Look at Bill Clinton. He’s Exhibit A, with a mother who chose abusive men and who, herself, was always the chief suspect in an Arkansas scandal involving a nurse (she was the suspected nurse) who euthanized her infirm and elderly patients.
Obama–well, he’s a different story. Also, father figure issues, but his mother was the opposite of controlling. She dumped him off at her parents and abandoned him for her own career aspirations. Imagine the issues he had from that.
The Kennedys–in Joseph Kennedy, JFK had a pro-Hitler, demanding father.
Poor John McCain. He had a relatively normal family and upbringing with two parents, which means the odds are–at least, in this case–against him, though the article tries to call John McCain’s father’s patriotic military service as “absenteeism” and compare it to Obama’s fathers total abandonment and irresponsibility (they are hardly the same):

The families that have produced U.S. presidents aren’t always great role models. In fact, they show a striking tendency to be deeply flawed. The childhoods of past presidents have been marked to an unusual degree by absent fathers, mothers so overinvolved that they could easily have been the original helicopter parents, and in some cases outright dysfunction, based on interviews with historians and family-history scholars and a review of presidential history books.
Childhood events that would destroy most children seem somehow to spark greatness in leaders-to-be, says Doug Wead, author of two books on presidents’ families. As two candidates with highly unusual family backgrounds vie for the presidency, Mr. Wead even sees Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama — to different degrees and in starkly different ways — fitting a pattern he describes as “Mama’s boys with absent fathers who were perceived by the sons as high achievers,” he says.
Sen. Barack Obama’s father, a failed, troubled Kenyan politician, separated from his mother when he was 2 years old. He saw his son for only a few weeks during his childhood and died when Sen. Obama was 21.
To be sure, analyzing family patterns from afar, through the veil of history, risks oversimplifying them. Many presidents’ families, including the parents of John Adams, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, serve as relatively positive examples. But in this era of parental perfectionism, studying the unusual ones can lend hope to parents that our children, too, can rise above our foibles and failings. Beyond any particular thing, Mr. Wead says, the key to success for past presidents was a harder-to-define internal drive. . . .
Some presidents’ families have been famously dysfunctional. Thomas Lincoln abandoned 9-year-old Abraham and his sister, 12, for several months in their frontier cabin right after the death of their mother, while he went to find a new wife, says Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author most recently of “Team of Rivals,” a book about Lincoln. When Thomas finally returned with their new stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston, the couple found them “wild — ragged and dirty,” seeming barely human, the stepmother later wrote.
Abraham’s father was “constantly taking him out of school or making him work off debt with other farmers or making fun of him that he was lazy because he was reading” so much, Ms. Kearns says. She and other historians credit his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and stepmother with providing the nurturing and love that propelled him to leadership. “All that I am or ever hope to be,” Lincoln said of his mother, “I owe to her.”
In another notably troubled family, Bill Clinton’s father died before Bill was born; his stepfather was a womanizer and an alcoholic who beat his mother, Virginia, according to biographer David Maraniss. Although Virginia, a warm, nurturing woman, made her son the adored centerpiece of the family, President Clinton said later that he often pined for his birth father.
Many leaders manage to draw inspiration from troubled legacies, Mr. Wead says. Sen. Obama’s father, a failed Kenyan politician, separated from Barack’s mother when their son was 2 years old, saw Barack for only a few weeks during his childhood and died when Barack was 21. Yet the senator as a child experienced relatives’ larger-than-life stories about his father as “a morality tale,” he wrote in his book, “Dreams from My Father.” He focused on his father’s good qualities — as a brilliant, gifted orator with high ideals and ambitions — and came to regard him as the embodiment of hope. “Even in his absence,” Sen. Obama wrote, “his strong image had given me some bulwark on which to grow up, an image to live up to, or disappoint.”

So, in other words, his family lied about his father who abandoned him. Guh-reat. Now, we know where he gets his ability to effectively tell voters tall tales and spread the mythology while he aims to “spread the wealth”.

In an even stronger pattern, historians say, many presidents had dominant and eccentric mothers. When Nancy McKinley’s son William became president, he set up a special telephone wire from the White House to her home in Ohio so they could talk every day, Mr. Wead says. And when young Franklin Roosevelt was quarantined with scarlet fever at his boarding school, Sara Delano Roosevelt found a ladder and climbed to his window to inspect him daily, wrote historian Doris Faber in a 1968 book on presidents’ mothers.
Lyndon Johnson’s mother had Lyndon sleep in her bedroom when his father was away; she “put him at the center of her life,” says Ms. Goodwin, his biographer. That bond helped create in her son “that ambition to go forward in the world.” Some presidents, including Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson, have actually called themselves “Mama’s boys.” In his book “Faith of My Fathers,” Sen. McCain, too, calls himself “my mother’s son.”
Even the McCain family, with its tradition of distinguished military service, fits the pattern of an absent father and an overinvolved mother who fills the gap, Mr. Wead says. Sen. McCain’s father was a respected four-star Navy admiral and commander of Pacific forces in the Vietnam war, but he was mostly absent from home during Sen. McCain’s childhood. Sen. McCain reflects pride in his father and was taught to regard his long absences “not as a deprivation, but as an honor.”
But he also spends a fair amount of ink on his fathers’ failings. He writes that he grew up lacking “a loving and protective family.” He describes his father as “a distant, inscrutable patriarch”; of his father’s battle with alcoholism, he writes that “when he was drunk, I did not recognize him.” He turned to his mother as a result, writing, “Her heart has always been large enough to encompass her children with as much love and care as any mother’s child has ever enjoyed.” (Both candidates declined through spokesmen to be interviewed for this column. [DS: Gee, I wonder why.])
Mr. Wead undertook his 2005 book, “The Raising of a President,” hoping to discover “some little key” to parenting children who rise to leadership, he says. But, he found the presidents’ parents “were as neurotic and possessive and awful as anybody’s,” he says — a discovery he found “very liberating” as a parent. Instead, the unifying thread was “how these presidents were able to transcend these experiences or re-invent them as inspirational.”
What’s the takeaway for parents? “Love is the key,” Mr. Wead says. Even in families that lacked discipline, future presidents were often able to find it elsewhere, in the military or school. But with enough of the crucial ingredient — parental love — Mr. Wead says, a child can realize, “I do not have to be a prisoner of my past.”

Well, I’m happy for the Marxist, “spread the wealth”, William Ayers/Jesse Jackson/Louis Farrakhan candidate that he was able to not “be a prisoner of [his] past.”
Let’s just hope that come Election Day, we won’t be prisoners of his future.

By Debbie Schlussel
I said it before. I’ll say it again. I’m opposed to early voting, which is rife with fraud potential and makes it easier for dummies and Spicolis to vote when they can’t even locate the next place to tattoo or pierce, er . . . mutilate. Oh, and guess who they’re all voting for? (The vast unwashed majority of them, anyway.)
Now, it’s gotten even worse. Drive-Thru early voting. Is this really what we want for America?
Do we really yearn to bring the movie “Idiocracy” to real life more and more on a daily, increasingly more rapid basis?
Apparently so:

SANTA ANA, Calif. – There were no burgers, car washes or lattes at this Orange County drive-through – just democracy.

More like, “just idiocy.”

Eager voters pulled their vehicles into the county registrar’s parking lot on Monday to either register or cast ballots at an electronic drive-through poll station.
The one-day-only offer came on the last day of voter registration for Californians. Only Orange County was offering the drive-through electronic voting service.
Some registrar offices across the state held late-night hours and set up drop boxes to receive voter registration forms before the midnight deadline. . . .
Although [Orange County Registrar Neal] Kelley said he believes the drive-through is the first one to use electronic voting, the concept of casting ballots from a driver’s seat is not new to California or the nation.
Sonoma County, for example, has long had a drive-up window where voters can drop paper ballots. A town in Vermont offered the same opportunity in 2006.
In Riverside County, voters can cast ballots this month from a roving “votemobile” that is traveling across the area.

Sorry, but voting is not like ordering a Big Mac. Not everyone who enjoys a Whopper should be enjoying easier and easier voting.
Do you really want more of these kinds of people choosing who will run the country?
If you do, you will continue to get candidates who more and more resemble President Camacho and his State of the Union address . . . (language alert)

Good luck, America . . . because luck may be the only thing that will save our country’s future. It certainly won’t be deliberate, conscious will.
So, would you like fries with that vote?

By Debbie Schlussel
Forget about the constant stream of baloney stories about a so-called Muslim swing vote in America. There is another swing vote in another swing state–Israel, where many are registered to vote and are casting absentee ballots in the November elections.
Carl in Jerusalem has the story. And here’s just a “guess”: The majority won’t be voting for the Barack Hussein Obama I-Dig-Talkin’-to-Ahmadinejad ticket. Remember, I told you about how Israelis for Barack Obama only had 57 members in Israel. That’s one for every of the 57 States in the Union that Barack Obama thinks we have.
In a close election, which this will be, every little voter bloc helps.

Americans in Israel say “Lo” (No, in Hebrew) to Obama
(Nobama Image from Josh Leone)

“F— Obama” Phonetic Hebrew Bumper Sticker Reflects Israeli Sentiment

By Debbie Schlussel
My late dad used to have a great saying, “Cast thy sh-t upon the waters,” a take on the Biblical “Cast thy bread upon the waters,” meaning the crap you spread to others will float back to you in multiples.
Sadly, the multiples of floating excrement are coming back to us and not those supposed to be the head honchos of enforcing immigration laws.
A few days ago, The ICE Princess a/k/a incompetent Immigration and Customs Enforcement Chieftess Julie L. Myers sent a mass e-mail to ICE agents, informing them about how some controversial former ICE employees got an award from President Bush.
But here’s the real award ICE deserves, the “Cast Thy Sh-t Upon the Waters” Award. When you read this story, you’ll see yet another reason why.
Thanks to the tip from reader Carla, who wrote, “From my local newspaper, The Sealy News, Austin County, Texas. Typical ICE, my tax dollars hard at work.”

A routine traffic stop along Interstate Highway 10 turned into a chase for officers with the Austin County Sheriff’s Office that ultimately ended in the arrest of six subjects from Guatemala.
The subjects were in the process of being transported from Mexico to the United States illegally, according to the ACSO.
The chase began after Sgt. Virgil Price stopped a vehicle along I-10. When he approached it, the vehicle took off. Eventually, officers found the vehicle, along with the six subjects in a ravine of the Little Bernard Creek, about 400 yards south of the interstate.
The vehicle – an old Jeep Cherokee – was reported stolen out of Houston and has been sent to the Houston Police Department for disposition. Although six subjects were found, two were not, including the coyote, or person who was getting paid to drive them into the country, according to Lt. Al Cordeiro. . . .
With several subjects under arrest, the ACSO contacted the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office out of Houston to take the subjects into custody. But ICE decline to come pick up the illegal aliens, and they were subsequently released.
“We’ve run into this many times in the past,” Cordeiro said. “Unless you have 40 or 50 of them, (ICE) won’t bother coming to pick them up. (ICE) tells us to get their names and turn them loose.”
And the ACSO cannot hold the illegal aliens, so that is their only option. . . .
So the ACSO had no option but to release the six subjects, even though they entered the country illegally.

How many times have I written about this exact same story? Different location, same consequences, same ICE blow-off.
Exit question: So when does Julie “Blackface Expert” Myers get her bundle of floating waste?
Some time after December, let’s hope.
Oh, and when will something called immigration enforcement actually start happening in earnest? Don’t hold your breath for that to happen come January . . . no matter who occupies the White House.

By Debbie Schlussel
Twenty-five years ago, today, at 6:22 a.m., Hezbollah terrorists–with help from Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hafez El-Assad’s Syria–murdered 241 U.S. Marines while they slept in barracks in Beirut. A bomb more powerful than 12,000 pounds of TNT was driven into the barracks and blew the Marines to bits.
They were there as peacekeepers–to protect Palestinian Sunni Muslims who invaded Lebanon from Israeli forces who were trying to clean up Lebanon from these Palestinian terrorists, who raped Shi’ite daughters and murdered Shi’ite sons in front of their parents. The mass-murdered Marines were there to protect Muslim barbarians from Maronite Christians who were trying to hold on to their fragile majority in the country and control of its government so their country wouldn’t turn into the extremist hellhole it has now become.

It was a tragic event in U.S. and Marine Corps history. But even more tragic is that 25 years later, America hasn’t learned any of the lessons loudly broadcast in that and related episodes for Americans in Lebanon and in other interactions with Muslims around the world bent on our destruction.
The most basic of lessons should have been learned before President Reagan sent the Marines on this failed mission: No good deed goes unpunished. Even more basic: Why do a good deed for barbarians? We shouldn’t have been there. We should have let Israel and the Maronites finish the clean-up job they began, and things would have been different in Lebanon and the Mid-East today . . . for the better.
Instead, we sent our Marines there, and made them sitting duck targets, ordering them to sit with unloaded rifles and a weak barbed wire perimeter, lest we offend the Muslims. Our Marines were ordered to keep ammunition in their belts, not their guns.

Twenty-five years later, those barbarians are here and their punishment is only beginning. The real punishment will be felt not by us, but by several generations into the future.
The Shi’ite Hezbollah terrorists working in unison with their Sunni allies are not longer confined to the streets of Beirut and South Lebanon. They control the streets of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, Michigan and are growing like a virus in Southeastern Michigan.
Two key allies of Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah–the man who issued the fatwah for the mass murder of those Marines–are now two of the most prominent Islamic clerics in America, being feted by American Presidents and Presidential contenders and being given regular columns in a major newspaper by an irresponsible, clueless, PC editor.
Not only did President Ronald Reagan–in the biggest misstep of his career–pull up stakes and surrender to Hezbollah after they attacked and murdered our troops in cold blood; but he and his successors surrendered portions of American soil to Hezbollah through lax immigration and rampant political correctness for two-and-a-half decades thereafter.
Where once they only marched in Lebanon’s streets, now tens of thousands of Hezbollah’s minions march on America’s streets. Talk about reverse containment. Hezbollah is containing us, not the other way around. It is spreading.
Donald Rumsfeld, then a special envoy to Beirut, says the lesson he learned about terrorists was that we must

take the war to them, to go after them where they are, where they live.

But we did not do that to them. They did that to us. Over the last quarter-century since the attacks, that’s what they did to us. Now, they live where we live. They took their war to us, where we are.

A quarter century later, Hezbollah has won and continues to spread its victories throughout the Western world. Here’s the scorecard:
* In April, 1983, Hezbollah drove a van bomb into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 46, including 16 Americans. America was the intended target. But the U.S. did nothing in response.
* In October 22, 1983, the 241 U.S. Marines were murdered by Hezbollah, along with countless others injured. Consistent with the April attack, America not only did nothing to respond, but America packed up and left Lebanon. America’s non-response–for which President Reagan was never called to talk–and its swift pullout were specifically cited by Osama Bin Laden as proof that America didn’t have the will to make its enemies pay . . . or even to survive. He cited:

the decline of American power and the weakness of the American soldier, who is ready to wage cold wars but unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut in 1983, when the Marines fled.

Bin Laden had the ethos right, but not the correct group. The brave American soldier did and still does have the preparation and will to fight this enemy. Sadly, the American soldier’s commanders and politicians and law enforcement bureaucrats in America don’t have the will. Their will is to engage in political correctness, allow Hezbollah on our shores through a “peaceful” slow invasion, and bend over backward, forward, and every which way for them.

* In 1985, Hezbollah hijacks TWA 847 and tramples and tortures to death U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem. His lifeless body is thrown off the plane for U.S. cameras to show nightly TV news audiences. America does nothing to respond.
Today, Hezbollah’s chief negotiatiator, Nabih Berri of Deaborn, is speaker of the Lebanese Parliament and a figure honored with visits by and gushing from American Secretary of State Condoleeze Rice. Berri, who heads terrorist group Harakat Amal (the Shi’ite Amal Militia), brokered his alliance with Hezbollah through marriage, and is also constantly feted by top American Muslim leaders from Dearborn.
In December 2005, Germany released to freedom Mohammad Ali Hamadi, one of the Hezbollah hijackers who tortured and murdered Stethem–a story I broke on this site. Both German leader Angela Merkel and U.S. President George Bush allowed this to happen and neither did a thing to stop it.
* In 1992, Hezbollah and Iran bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 22, and in 1994 Hezbollah and Iran blew up the Jewish Community Center of Buenos Aires, killing almost 100. The target was specific: Buenos Aires has the largest Jewish community in Latin America. Hezbollah was asserting its presence and establishing a base in South America. A decade-and-a-half later, America finally noticed . . . far too late. Hezbollah is already entrenched not only in U.S. soil, but elsewhere on our hemisphere. Hezbollah and Iran paid Argentinian President Carlos Menem, an Arab and “former” Muslim $5,000,000 to cover up their involvement and block any real investigation.
* In June 1998, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda worked together to bomb and blow up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The target was U.S. servicemen living there. 19 of them were murdered. America did nothing to avenge their blood. Once again, Bin Laden was right about America’s will to fight this enemy.
* In 2000, a man named “W.” from Texas runs for President and wins, making his pandering to Hezbollah’s tens of thousands of Shi’ites from Dearborn a centerpiece of his campaign, and garnering their Islamic endorsement. He makes ending of both “profiling of Arabs” and the use of “secret evidence” against Islamic terrorists points in a Presidential debate against Al Gore.
For this, George W. Bush is hailed by Osama Siblani, editor of the Arab American News and brother of a top executive of Al-Manar a/k/a Hezbollah TV. Bush eagerly accepts this, making many trips to fete the Hezbollah crowd of Dearborn, despite the fact that Siblani’s “newspaper” has been identified as Hezbollah’s key publishing house organ and Siblani one of its top agents.
* In 2001, when Bush takes office, he makes Hezbollah’s top friend in the U.S. Senate, Spencer Abraham, his Energy Secretary. No biggie that the defeated U.S. Senator from Michigan just sent $86 million in U.S. taxpayer money to Hezbollah in South Lebanon.
* Also in 2001, on September 11th, America is attacked. John Chipura, who barely survived the 1983 Marine barracks attack by Hezbollah, is a New York City fireman. He is last seen on September 11th running up into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. His scheduled October 2001 wedding would never take place.

Bush Faith-Based Funding Policy Advisor Hassan Qazwini
Hangs with Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s Spiritual Leader
Who Ordered Murder of 241 U.S. Marines
* Throughout his first term, George W. invites to his Crawford, Texas ranch, fetes at the White House, and visits in Dearborn, three of Hezbollah’s top Iranian-backed imams–Hassan Qazwini, Mohammed Ali Elahi, and Husham Al-Hussainy. The President is photographedd kissing and hugging each of them at various times in his Presidency.
Despite Qazwini’s frequent trips to Lebanon to hang with Hezbollah spiritual leader Fadlallah–the man who ordered the murders of the Marines 25 years ago today–Bush invites Qazwini to his ranch to help him design the American taxpayer giveaway to his mosque, via the “faith-based funding initiative.”
* Also, in 2000, Republican Congressman Joe Knollenberg, his then-chief of staff Paul Welday, and then-U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham sought almost $300 million dollars in U.S. aid to Hezbollah, at the request of their non-constituent, Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute. They got $86 million of that and sent it straight to the terrorists that murdered our Marines. Knollenberg is in a tough re-election fight and Welday is seeking a seat in the Michigan House. Remember this on election day.
* In 2002, a New York Times front page story floats the not-so-subrosa Condoleezza Rice-Colin Powell-George W. Bush plan to remove Hezbollah from the State Department Terrorist List and help aid the group in its plans to takeover Lebanon in its entirety politically. Who cares about 241 old blown up skeletons of Marines when we have a “Religion of Peace” to pander to and a Nobel Peace Prize to win?
* In 2003, Marine survivors and relatives prevail over a federal judge, who declares Iran liable for the Beirut bombing of the Marines, awarding $2.7 billion to them and against Iran.
Because of Bush Administration pandering to Iran and Bush Justice and State Department machinations, these survivors and family members have never seen a dime. The Bushies refuse to give them any Iranian assets. At the same time, the Bush Administration has increased supposedly embargoed trade with the Hezbollah patron-state from $8 million per year under the Clinton Administration to almost $150 million per year.
* Also in 2003, President Bush’s hand-picked U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey Collins, discusses with the Detroit News and his friend, “former” Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, their mutual support for the wearing of Hezbollah t-shirts in the Detroit area. Collins is Hamad’s date to a Detroit News “Michiganians of the Year” banquet. The Detroit News refuses to answer questions regarding why it picked this Palestinian supporter of Islamic terrorism as a “Michiganian of the Year.”
* In 2005, U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III joked at a Hezbollah mosque in Dearborn Heights that he doesn’t know why Hezbollah is on the State Department terrorist list, that the group just does great “humanitarian work.” Murphy allowed Hezbollah’s top American financier, Talal Chahine, to flee the country and allowed him to run and collect profits from his American business, even after he was indicted for fleecing American taxpayers of $7 million and laundering $21 million to Hezbollah through that business. Today, Hezbollah praiser and enabler Murphy is a Bush-appointed federal judge whose major ruling has been to allow ineligible voters to cast their ballots in November.
* In 2006, during the Israel-Hezbollah war, tens of thousands of Hezbollah and HAMAS supporters march daily through the streets of Dearborn and Detroit with photos of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and swastikas. America pressures Israel to quickly end the war and give a de facto victory to the terrorist group, further strengthening it and its terrorist recruitment efforts.
* In 2007, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff visits Hezbollah’s imams in Dearborn, feting them with his pate and blather. Not long after his protege, Julie L. Myers, fetes the rest of Hezbollah’s key leaders at a banquet at Dearborn’s Hezbollah Social Club, the Bint Jebail Cultural Center.
Their top official in Michigan and Ohio, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent in Charge Brian Moskowitz transformed an office that went after Hezbollah financiers and smugglers into an office that panders to Hezbollah’s top operatives here and refuses to get in the way of the terrorist group’s Dearborn- and Dearborn Heights-based operations. He also holds regular “apology sessions” in the few cases that there are meaningless, toothless raids on Hezbollah charities that are then allowed to remain open for business.
* In 2008, John McCain invited Hezbollah agent, key financier, and open supporter Ali Jawad to sit atop his campaign finance committee. The McCain will to denounce Hezbollah terrorists who murdered our troops is so weak that McCain wouldn’t release a statement stating why he dumped Jawad, despite Jawad’s declared support for Hezbollah. “We don’t care about the Hezbollah stuff,” declares Ambassador Ron Weiser, who heads up McCain’s finance efforts in Michigan and stands to garner yet another ambassadorship from McCain.
No big deal that Dearborn police caught Jawad selling smuggled cigarettes for Hezbollah, or that he gave about $200,000 in funds to Hezbollah-backed Lebanese Member of Parliament Ali Bazzi to get him elected.
Also in 2008, Jawad is invited to a pandering hour-long interview by airhead Detroit radio talk show host Frank Beckmann, on the station that hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Beckmann gushes over Jawad’s fanciful stories and open support for Hezbollah, saying it isn’t a big deal:
“So, you support Hezbollah. But anyway . . . .”
Beckmann even allows on the airwaves, unchallenged and undisputed, Jawad’s claim that Hezbollah was not behind the Beirut Marine barracks bombing. Even Hezbollah admits–in fact, brags and celebrates–that it committed this dastardly act 25 years ago, today. Disgusting and irresponsible. But, today, Hezbollah gets positive play on our airwaves and even has in its corner so-called “conservative” talk show hosts like Beckmann.
Also this year, Arthur Horwitz, a far-leftist and self-hating Jew who owns the Detroit Jewish News, formed a partnership with Hezbollah’s Siblani and his pro-Hezbollah/HAMAS Arab American News.

Detroit News Columnist Mohammed Ali Elahi
Hangs with Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s Spiritual Leader
Who Ordered Murder of 241 U.S. Marines
* Today, Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi–open supporter of Hezbollah, crony of Hezbollah’s Fadllalah who issued the order to blow up the barracks, and former spiritual leader of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Navy in Elahi’s native Iran–has U.S. citizenship, despite the fact that he lied about his ties to Hezbollah on documents to get and remain here and garner citizenship. He was sent here by Iran and Hezbollah to further radicalize the Shi’ite Muslim community. He told The Washington Times that the Jews are behind the 9/11 attacks on America.
Also, today, Elahi is the only Hezbollah agent in America to have a regular column in a major newspaper for his anti-American, anti-Semitic ravings. He was given a regular column by irresponsible, pandering Detroit News Editorial Page Editor Nolan Finley, whose excuse is, “Well, he has a following.” So did Hitler. So does David Duke.
Yes, Hezbollah has done quite well in taking its jihad against 241 U.S. Marines on Beirut soil in 1983 to 300 milllion Americans on U.S. soil over the two-and-a-half decades since. Their actions have been met with silence–and even reward–from a weak, pandering America, every single step of the way.
While America panders to a mass murdering terrorist group, Scherna Sutton lives alone. Her fiance, Cpl. Craig Wyche, was murdered 25 years ago in the Hezbollah attack. She has never found anyone else who measures up to him. All she has left is his letters.
All Cpl. Doug Held’s family has left are audiotapes he sent his parents.
Sgt. Stephen Russell is alive. He sat at the guard booth powerless to respond as he watched the homicide bomber drive the truck through the barbed wire and toward the 1,600 sleeping Marines. As noted, he and other Marines were forced to keep their rifles unloaded.
But he blames himself for the attack and lives with the guilt and frequent nightmares. He told USA Today he can still h ear the voices of the wounded and dying in Beirut and sleeps alone on the floor at night. He hasn’t spent the night in the same bed as his wife in many years.
Read this important piece from last week about what happened that morning of October 23, 1983, and what happened to some who were lucky enough to survive but unfortunate enough to suffer the consequences.
A quarter century later, America barely remembers the lives of 241 U.S. Marines murdered in cold blood by the terrorist group that now has a strong presence on U.S.
The remains of 241 brave U.S. souls are turning over in their forgotten graves.

“They Came in Peace”: Memorial to Marines Slain in Beirut
***
From my October 23, 2006 post remembering this important anniversary:

A few of the Marines managed to escape. A trucker friend of mine from Michigan was among them. He told me that Palestinian and Syrian gunman with machine guns surrounded the perimeter of the Marine barracks, showering those few who managed to escape the fiery explosion with bullets. . . .
While I admire Ronald Reagan greatly, he made a great mistake after this attack. Not long after, he pulled up the stakes and sent our Marines home. There’s an old saying from Stalin or Lenin:

And you shall probe with bayonets. If you find steel, retreat. But if you find mush, keep digging.

Islamists found mush in America, when they drove us out of Beirut. Then, in 1985, they murdered Navy Diver Robert Stethem and after him, there were the torture deaths of Colonel William R. “Rich” Higgins and CIA Attache William Buckley–actions they would not likely have perpetrated, had we shown the Hezbos who’s boss. But we didn’t. Then they found mush in Somalia, and a cornucopia of other places. Bin Laden and others saw this. And they don’t forget. “The Marines fled after two explosions,” Bin Laden once said of the U.S. in Lebanon. . . .
****
Read about Armando Ybarra, who lived but is seriously disabled in his right leg. He was awarded a Purple Heart.
Beirut Attack Survivor, Marine Armando Ybarra, Then . . .

Armando Ybarra, Now . . .

. . .
[On one of the memorials to the slain Marines,] “They Came in Peace” is carved on the wall–something you can never say about our Islamist enemies.

By Debbie Schlussel
The story of Cathy Shaughnessy is important on many fronts. This far-left Democratic candidate for office demonstrates why blogs are important because some of them–like this one–actually do the investigative journalism the mainstream media won’t. Shaughnessy is also Exhibit A of the kind of lowlife the mortgage bailout bill will help via your hard-earned tax money. And how far left liberals can often get away with murder. Or, at least, apparent bankruptcy fraud and/or campaign finance fraud.
Catherine Caya Shaughnessy is an unbalanced, liberal, part-time yoga teacher and Democratic Party candidate for Township Clerk in swanky, upscale Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield Township.
If elected in November–and she will be, because Republicans chose to consort with her and not to put up an opponent–Shaughnessy stands to earn over $106,000 in annual salary and $40,000-plus in benefits.
Problem is, in addition to her mental instability, it appears that Cathy Shaughnessy committed bankruptcy fraud in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Cathy Shaughnessy:
Democratic Candidate/Far-Left Lunatic Apparently Committed Bankruptcy Fraud
Shaughnessy and her husband Tom filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last year in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Michigan–Case No, 07-57455–and their bankruptcy continues. The case is not yet closed.
She and her husband claimed they couldn’t pay their bills, including the $450,474 they owe to AMC Mortgage Services, while at the same time Shaughnessy donated over $16,000 to her campaign for office, money which she apparently concealed and secreted from her bankruptcy filing. Court filings don’t show any report by Shaughnessy to the Bankruptcy Trustee of the possession and/or receipt of these funds.





That’s generally called “bankruptcy fraud”, and it’s usually followed by fines of up to $500,000 and/or imprisonment for up to five years.
Chapter 7 bankruptcy means you have assets and earnings at or below the level of poverty and cannot pay your creditors back. You get to wipe the slate clean and avoid most obligations.
Cathy Shaughnessy and her husband claimed in bankruptcy filings that their only funds were $228.00 in a checking account and ZERO in savings. They also claimed that they had assets of only $0-$10,000. Yet, beginning in March, Ms. Shaughnessy began loaning a total of $16,360 to her campaign.



Where did she get the money? And why wasn’t it listed in her bankruptcy filings and used to pay money to the many creditors she owed? In her campaign filings, Shaughnessy lists her “employment” as “Homemaker”, so clearly she had no way of earning the mysterious money. Her bankruptcy filing also notes that she is not a wage earner.
And while her bankruptcy filing lists total household income of $24,609 in 2005, $13,159 in 2006, and $59,672 in 2007, Shaughnessy also lists monthly living expenses at $5,127. So how did she suddenly have over $16,000 to lend her campaign, unless she committed bankruptcy fraud, campaign finance fraud, or both? If the money was lent to or given to her by someone else, then that likely constitutes money laundering and campaign finance fraud, something for which attorney Geoffrey Fieger was prosecuted in federal court.
And the bankruptcy filing isn’t the only apparent lie. During her primary campaign, Shaughnessy sent out a letter to West Bloomfield Township voters, claiming that her bankruptcy was due to the failure of the automotive industry and that before that her husband’s defunct business was “thriving.”
But Shaughnessy’s bankruptcy filing tells a different story. She and her husband Tom list about $700,000 in unpaid debts, including tens of thousands of dollars in multiple credit card debts spanning almost three decades and dating back to 1980.
Yet, at the same time, while she and her husband did not pay their obligations, they owned a time share in Florida, a boat, and an expensive home in one of Michigan’s most upscale suburbs. It’s also well-known that their daughter was involved in very expensive dance lessons and competitions. They lived the high life. They owe almost $50,000 EACH to American Express and MBNA America for credit card bills, $5,300 in 2003 income taxes to the IRS, and $2,000 on a Macy’s department store charge card, to name a few of their many debts completely blown off while Cathy Shaughnessy gave thousands to her own campaign for office.

Colleen, Tom, and Cathy Shaughnessy:
They Lived the High Life, Then Filed for Bankruptcy & Ran For Office
This is how Cathy Shaughnessy managed her own, um, “budget”. Imagine how she will spend the taxpayers’ money as Clerk.
Shaughnessy and her husband Tom had their home in swanky West Bloomfield foreclosed on, but they are the typical beneficiaries of the mortgage bailout bail. While you pay your federal income taxes, they lived the high life and didn’t pay theirs. While you will pay for bailouts of irresponsible homeowners like them, she’s spending thousands on her campaign for office . . . thousands that she didn’t bother to declare to Federal Bankruptcy Court.
Both Shaughnessy’s and her husband’s signatures are all over bankruptcy filings declaring that they are telling the truth under severe penalty of law. But apparently, they think they can get away with it. And because of the failure of Detroit’s mainstream media outlets to cover this very blatant, egregious behavior, they are, indeed, getting away with it.
And you are paying the price. You will pay for the increased prices for the items they bought and chose not to pay for. I can understand and feel for anyone who is stuck in unexpected hard times in a tough national and even tougher Michigan economy.
But that’s not the case here. Most people who file for Chapter Seven Bankruptcy are legitimately down on their luck with no assets and barely able to survive. On the contrary, Cathy Shaughnessy suddenly had–as a homemaker with no income–over $16,000 to lend to her campaign.
Moreover, the Shaughnessys lived their entire marriage in debt, all the time living the high life while their creditors were holding the bag. They bought an expensive home in one of Detroit’s wealthiest suburbs, spent thousands on clothes and vacation destinations, and other excesses for their luxe life. At the same time, Shaughnessy did not work to pay off her debts and stayed at home while teaching a yoga class here and there.
Oh, and she spent her other free time as an environmental extremist, trying to prevent people from building or expanding their homes and businesses, as a member of the West Bloomfield Township Board’s Wetland Commission.
In 2006, Shaughnessy’s outlandish and lunatic behavior and rudeness were the reasons Township Board Trustees removed her from the commission. The language used was:

APPROVED removal of Catherine Shaughnessy from the Wetland Review Board for reasons of insubordination to the Township Board, inappropriate behavior to fellow board members, petitioners, public and Township professionals.

I’ve been a target of the crazy Shaughnessy’s nutjob antics. Although I don’t know her, in 1998 I was campaigning outside a polling place when I was running for the Michigan House of Representatives. Shaughnessy was campaigning for her fellow liberal Democrat–my pro-choice, incompetent trial lawyer opponent Marc Shulman–who was posing as a Republican in what was then a Republican-dominated district. As I stood there trying to hand out my campaign literature to voters, Shaughnessy yelled loudly to her then eight-year-old daughter (and voters),

You see that C-nt, Debbie Schlussel. She’s a F-cking Cunt and a B-tch.

This and other hysterically screamed obscenities and abuse from Catherine Shaughnessy went on for hours, outside a community center where people took their kids for after school classes and activities. It was so offensive that the police had to be called by passers-by, who unlike Cathy Shaughnessy, didn’t want their young kids to hear this stuff.
But the ultimate chutzpah is not Cathy Shaughnessy’s unhinged, wacko behavior. It’s her own donation of thousands to her campaign at the same time that her Chapter Seven bankruptcy is ongoing. A March 31, 2008 asset and property report filed in her bankruptcy showed only $228.00 in a checking account and ZERO in savings, while two weeks earlier, on March 17, 2008, Shaughnessy lent $2,200 to her campaign, the first of thousands of dollars she would loan herself.
Not exactly the kind of integrity-endowed person with whom you want to entrust your election ballots, which is what she’ll be overseeing and “counting” for the next four years. Don’t bet that she’ll be able to count ballots more accurately than she counts her own money in bankruptcy filings.
By the way, this summer, while Cathy Shaughnessy was loaning her campaign thousands of dollars, the Federal Bankruptcy Trustee in the case was forced to reduce his fees from almost $2,000 to about $300, because according to her bankruptcy, she didn’t have the money to pay. Indeed.
This story should be all over the Detroit newspapers and television news, but it isn’t. If Shaughnessy were an arch-conservative or even a centrist instead of a far-left loon with obvious mental health issues, it would dominate the headlines.
Instead, those much derided blogs and bloggers–like this site and me–must do the work (investigative journalism) that some Americans (the mainstream media) just won’t do.
***
Predictably, Cathy Shaughnessy did not respond to questions regarding her apparent fraud. Someone who didn’t do anything wrong would have responded and defended herself, but she did not answer this e-mail:

From: Debbie Schlussel writedebbie@gmail.com
Date: Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 4:50 PM
Subject: CATHY, PRESS Inquiry . . .
To: Cathy Shaughnessy
Hi, Cathy:
I have a few questions for a piece I’m writing:
You filed for bankruptcy, stating you had assets of $10,000 or less. Yet, while in bankruptcy, you suddenly had $16,000 to loan to your campaign. Where did the money come from, since you note that you are a homemaker and not employed–on your campaign forms? Also, did you report the $16,000 to the bankruptcy trustee and creditors in your case? How did you have $16,000 to give to your campaign, while the bankruptcy trustee had to waive most of his fees b/c you allegedly didn’t have the money?
Please let me know the answers to these questions because I am writing about it and I want to give your side, too.
Debbie Schlussel

***
Will Cathy Shaughnessy be prosecuted for bankruptcy fraud by the Republican-dominated U.S. Attorney’s office?
Don’t hold your breath.
The Republicans chose not to even put up a candidate against her, insuring that she will sail into office in November. And the nutty Shaughnessy, sadly, has big government Republican supporters behind the puppet strings. Sharon Law, the Republican clerk she will be replacing, her husband, Republican officeholder Tom, and son, Republican officeholder David Law (a State Representative running for my county’s prosecutor and who will probably win), are all backing this lunatic.
The Laws–career Republican politicians on the taxpayer dole–donated hundreds to Shaughnessy’s campaign, out of anger against the Township, after Sharon Law cost the Township hundreds of thousands in tax money. The Township had to settle a defamation lawsuit for about $200,000 after Sharon Law defamed a person using Township e-mail, cost the person her job, and perjured herself on the stand in federal court.

Cathy Shaughnessy & Republican Crony Enabler Tom Law
Yes, clearly there’s precedent for corruption in this Detroit suburb’s Clerk position.
It’s a great story, if only the Detroit media would bother to cover it. But their refusal to do so is why both the Detroit Newsistan and Free Press must layoff workers and are losing money, while this website’s readership continues to grow.
**** UPDATE, 10/23/08: Did Far-Left Democratic candidate Cathy Shaughnessy commit Mortgage Fraud? Reader David, who is a mortgage lender, writes that it appears that Cathy Shaughnessy took out a “Liar’s Loan” mortgage:

I notice that on your article dealing with Shaughnessy that the mortgage has a balance of $450,000.00, which in itself does not fit. Their [Cathy and Thomas Shaughnessy’s] incomes do not support the balance of that loan.
Then, I noticed that their mortgage is with AMC as a mortgage holder. AMC took over portfolios for a lot of the subprime lenders, i.e. Indymac. The loans that AMC took over were almost only “Stated Income/Stated Asset” loans, what many are now calling “Liars Loans”. It would be interesting to see the “Stated Income” that Shaughnessy “quoted” in order to get her loan, and if she committed fraud to do it.
This “Stated Income” would possibly be of interest to both the mortgage lender that granted the loan and the bankruptcy trustee in trying to substantiate what is true and what is not. If the loan was obtained under the use of fraud, then it would not be dischargable in the bankruptcy code and it will stick to her as a criminal offense. Bankruptcy chapter 7 then would “not erase” this debt.
Me being a mortgage lender, I recognize the flags.

Incredibly, one of Cathy Shaughnessy’s campaign brochures bears this headline, “Who Will Protect Our Home Values in West Bloomfield?” Hmmm . . . not that a Township Clerk’s job has anything to do with protecting home values, but clearly a candidate who engaged in apparent mortgage fraud and then blew off her mortgage and had her house foreclosed upon while she gave thousands to her campaign, ain’t exactly the best choice to “Protect Our Home Values.”
Yes, there are a lot of red flags in the Cathy Shaughnessy odyssey. Sadly, there is only one candidate running for the office she seeks: her.