Good grief.
OK, we started the day with the latest round of ridiculous stories about Elizabeth Warren's ancestry -- guaranteed by Senator Scott Brown, who put out his first major statement on it yesterday, perfectly timed to distract from his vote against capping student loan interest rates. Brown called on Warren to release law school applications and personnel files and whatnot, because of "questions" raised about her claims of being part Cherokee.
It's worth noting that nobody has actually brought any claim of anything against Warren. That is, aside from speculation by people who have nothing to do with it, correct me if I'm wrong but nobody who has ever had anything to do with Warren's career has made any claim that she, or any institutions, have done... well, anything, let alone anything wrong.
Don't get me wrong, if people are interested, then people, and the media, should keep asking questions. But pure, baseless, formless speculation really shouldn't be sufficient to prompt a US Senator to demand that his political opponent make public every detail of her professional life, should it?
It briefly seemed to me that the Warren campaign was finally turning a corner on this mess. Yesterday I was at an event where they carved out time for her to take questions from the press, and she fiercely pounded on the message that Brown was just trying to distract attention from his vote. Good. Solid.
Oh, I should also mention that Scotto, before voting against the bill, took to the Senate floor to unveil his own idea for funding the student-loan interest cap -- and a wonderfully dotish idea it was. Brown noted that according to a report, the government has paid out a large sum erroneously, to bad accounts and whatnot. So, he said, let's take some of that money and use it for this.
That makes no sense; the money is gone. I mean, you could propose that we save money going forward by implementing better quality control, and then take the savings to pay for this, but that's not going to do much good in the next few months, or probably several years, which is what we're talking about; anyway, Scotto really didn't have any plan to bring about those better quality controls -- he said something about maybe doing a pilot program of some sort -- he was just talking nonsense, really.
So things might have been turning against him. But then this morning that was totally upended by some true foolishness from the Massachusetts Democratic Party. They loudly filed a complaint with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics, calling for an investigation
into whether Scotto used Senate staff to film that half-court shot you might have seen recently, and then promoted it for campaign purposes.
This may technically be a violation, but are we really launching Senate investigations over this (and sending reporters a barrage of press releases)? Yeesh. So much for that message discipline I thought E-Dubs was showing yesterday.
But wait! More idiocy was yet to come!
This time it was Republican state rep/self-promotional juggernaut Dan Winslow, who held a press conference to announce that he had hired a private investigator to look into newly-hired interim executive director of the gaming commission.
That would be Stan McGee, who a few years back was alleged to have assaulted a 15-year-old boy; charges were never brought. What some non-charges of that type have to do with McGee's ability to do this current job I'm not sure; why a state representative would hire a private investigator to look into a public official is also beyond me. (Winslow also put up a web site soliciting contributions to the cause.)
When I first saw the news of McGee's hire, back on May 1, I Tweeted "Full public rehab - getting good name back - does happen." I spoke too soon. By this evening McGee had given up and resigned before he began.
Oh, and the legislature moved swiftly to undo the "bake sale ban," a matter of grave interest apparently to people who call into WRKO from their car phones.
Can't wait for tomorrow!
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