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It’s the type of coincidence every politician dreads. On Tuesday, political commenters reportedthat one of Romney’s go-to campaign catch-phrases, “Keep America American,” was a central theme of Ku Klux Klan publications in the 1920s, and served as a rallying cry for the white supremacist group’s campaign of violence and intimidation against black Americans, as well as Catholics, gay people and Jews.
The progressive Americablog first posted examples of the overlap, and a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney declined to comment on the matter when reached by HuffPost.
The Republican primary debates have ignited issues of immigration and poverty in this country, both of which disproportionally affect minorities. But Romney, a multi-millionaire, has steered away from some of the more drastic positions his rival candidates have taken on these issues.
Americablog includes a video of Romney speaking, in which he certainly sounds like he’s using the slogan. Romney is also quoted in an L.A. Times piece repeating the phrase.
The slogan was first used in the 1850s by members of the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic movement called the “Know Nothing Party,” many of whom were reacting to the dramatic influx of immigrants in the mid-19th century, especially those fleeing Ireland’s Potato Famine.
NEW YORK — The sexual-assault case against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is set to take a dramatic U-turn on Friday as prosecutors have come to question the credibility of the accuser. As a result, the bail and house arrest restrictions imposed on the French politician may be eased following a court hearing scheduled for Friday.
The alleged victim, a 32-year-old hotel maid from Guinea, was said to have lied repeatedly, according to a report in the New York Times on Thursday.
Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said: “There will be serious issues raised by the district attorney’s office and us concerning the credibility of the complaining witness”.
Prosecutors are reportedly expected to bring a number of revelations about the accusing maid’s past into light on Friday, including an alleged gang rape in her home country which she later admitted she made up, and an association with a man convicted of drug charges which has been recorded in a taped telephone call.
Brafman is likely to ask the judge during Friday’s hearing to end Strauss-Kahn’s house arrest and electronic monitoring in the light of the diminished credibility of the accuser.
Prosecutors, however, are not expected to ask for a dismissal of the charges against Strauss-Kahn, who faces a seven-count indictment at this stage.
Strauss-Kahn has been under armed guard in a Manhattan townhouse after posting a total of $6 million in cash bail and bond.
Most watchers on Capitol Hill don’t expect the ethics trials of Reps. Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters’ to begin until after midterm elections in November, reported The Hill on Monday.
It’s feared that the trials could overly politicize the ethics process, but for both Rangel and Waters, the charges have already been wrought with political controversy.
Both lawmakers have made it a point to publicly fight their battles, hinting that the scales of scrutiny are tipped heavily against black lawmakers.
Over the summer, the House ethics committee released 13 charges against Rangel. They included damning allegations that the longtime Harlem congressman had tried to use his political sway as chairman of the Ways & Means Committee to woo corporate donors in financing his self-named institute at City College of New York.
Waters faces three charges of her own, stemming from her dealings with OneUnited, a bank in which her husband was a former board member and owned over $250,000 in stocks.
House investigators today officially accused veteran New York Rep. Charles Rangel of 13 violations of congressional ethics standards, throwing a cloud over his political career and putting Democrats in a pickle throughout fall elections.
The allegations – which include failure to report rental income from vacation property in the Dominican Republic and to report more than $600,000 in assets on his congressional financial disclosure statements – came as lawyers for Rangel and the House ethics committee worked on a plea deal.
One was reached, sources tell the Associated Press, but Republicans indicated it was too late.
The deal between the lawyers will have little meaning if the committee members don’t approve it, and Republicans said at the proceeding they were insisting on going forward with a trial. The panel is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
“Mr. Rangel was given multiple opportunities to settle this matter. Instead, he chose to move forward to the public trial phase,” said Rep. Jo Bonner of Alabama, the senior Republican on the ethics panel
Many Democrats had urged Rangel to settle the case to avoid the prospect of televised hearings right before November congressional elections that will determine which party controls Congress next year.
However, as Friday’s public airing of the charges drew nearer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem resigned to the case proceeding.
“The chips will have to fall where they may politically,” she told reporters. Pursuing ethics cases against House members is “a serious responsibility that we have,” she said.
One of the most callous incidents, captured on video andposted on YouTube, involved an injured boy sitting next to a small pool of blood on the pavement.
Some young men approached him and initially appeared to be helping the victim to his feet, but then rummaged through his rucksack and took some of its contents before he staggered away in a daze. It was unclear where the incident took place.
Though some of the looters have tried to justify their actions by portraying their victims as rich, many of those hardest hit are family businesses that will struggle to rebuild after being devastated by the rioters.
The House of Reeves furniture store, which was founded in 1867 in Croydon, south London, withstood two world wars and even gave its name to the road it stood on. But on Monday night, it was razed to the ground.
The apparent lack of resistance faced by many looters has seen some claim that the police response should have been tougher. Giselle Asante, 57, who has owned her tailor-made clothing business in Peckham High Street, in south-east London, for 20 years, complained that as rioters entered her store the police “didn’t even stop people who were looting in front of them”.
“It is truly devastating,” she said. “We cannot replace any of these things because we have made them all.”