Figures……the Republicans use fake soldiers and a fake funeral….and they’re making cracks about the Democrats props. Unbelievable.

From CBS News:

It was a video that was supposed to elicit soaring patriotism and real emotions about the Pledge of Allegiance. But to do that, it used fake soldiers and a staged military funeral instead of the real thing.

On Tuesday night, 15-year-old Victoria Blackstone, a sophomore at the St. Agnes School in St. Paul, led the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center in the Pledge of Allegiance. The audience heard her 434-word essay, “Pledging myself to the Flag of the United States of America,” an essay she’d entered in the “Wave the Stars & Stripes” essay contest and won. The RNC turned that essay into a three and a half minute video, a visually stirring montage rolling over Victoria’s words about sharing the Pledge with Americans who have stood at important moments in history.

There’s the Continental Congress…A real WWII vet…Photos of workers at Ground Zero. A close-up of a folded flag presented to a grieving widow at a military funeral… profiles of soldiers swelling with pride in slo-motion.

But CBS News found that the footage of the ‘funeral’ and soldiers is what is called ‘stock’ footage. The soldiers were actors and the funeral scene was from a one-day film shoot, produced in June. No real soldiers were used during production.

Do you have to wonder the party affiliation of the person who filed this complaint?

I’m surprised the protesters weren’t jailed. Locked up and held behind bars until the GOP convention was over… or longer. At this rate, I can see similar happenings in the not-too-distant future, but where the people involved are stood up to walls and shot.

We’re not just going backwards. We’re going backwards at an alarming rate of speed.

Police raid headquarters of RNC protesters

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (CNN) — Police raided a rental hall used by a group organizing protests at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Friday.

The RNC Welcoming Committee, which describes itself as “anarchist/anti-authoritarian,” accused St. Paul police of trying to disrupt their protest planned for Monday, the day the GOP convention is set to begin.

While no one was arrested, the group said police temporarily detained and photographed at least 50 people who were inside the building.

St. Paul Police spokesman Tom Walsh said they were executing a search warrant.

“The cause for the search warrant is not public at this time,” Walsh said.

As many as 30 police officers entered with guns drawn, according to witnesses in the building.

Waxman: RNC… “has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails.”

GOP Halts Effort to Retrieve White House E-Mails

After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials, the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel’s chairman said yesterday.

The move increases the likelihood that an untold number of RNC e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first term of the Bush administration — including many sent or received by former presidential adviser Karl Rove — will never be recovered, said House Democrats and public records advocates.

A bunch of republicans lied. Let’s all put on our “big surprise!” face.

Worried that they may come across as an “all white country club party”, the RNC has hired polling and focus groups to find out just how far they can go in attacking a minority or a female candidate. “Undisciplined messaging” is the term coined by the GOP for the clumsy rhetoric.

Republicans will be told to “be sensitive to tone and stick to the substance of the discussion” and that “the key is that you have to be sensitive to the fact that you are running against historic firsts,” the strategist explained.

In other words, Republicans should expect a severe backlash if they say or do anything that smacks of politicizing race or gender. They didn-t need an expensive poll to learn that lesson, however. [...]

GOP officials are certain their words will be scrutinized ever more aggressively. They anticipate a regular media barrage of accusations of intolerance - or much worse.

Seems someone forgot to send Ann Coulter the memo.

This is too funny. It’s been reported that the Science Museum of Minnesota will be closed for the Republican National Convention in September. But here’s the kicker……the Republican Party will rent the museum and party delegates will be offered complimentary tours of the museum’s exhibits.

More at the Minnesota Monitor

WASHINGTON –E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee, the House Oversight Committee said Monday.

The Bush administration may have committed (emphasis mine) “extensive” violations of a law requiring that certain records be preserved, said the committee’s Democratic chairman, adding that the panel will deepen its probe into the use of political e-mail accounts.

The committee’s interim report said the number of White House officials who had RNC e-mail accounts, and the number of messages they sent and received, were more extensive than previously realized.

The administration has said that about 50 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts during Bush’s presidency. But the House committee found at least 88.

The RNC has preserved e-mails from some of the heaviest users, including 140,216 messages sent or received by Bush’s top political adviser in the White House, Karl Rove. However, “the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials,” said the interim report, issued by committee chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

The 51 include Ken Mehlman, a former White House political director who reportedly used his RNC account frequently, the report said.

“Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails,” the report said, “the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive.”

More at Boston.com

Why is it so many Republicans have a problem following the law???? Martinez blames his staff on the massive errors. He blamed his staff for outrageous ads against his opponents in 2004, and for a memo on how to score political points using Terri Shiavo. Yet the Republican party thinks his leadership abilities are so great that he should be the Republican National Committee chairman. Oh I forgot….competence and morals have nothing to do with the Republican party appointments. What a scumbag.

WASHINGTON - Mel Martinez’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign has been forced to refund nearly $95,000 in contributions after a federal audit that also found information lacking on nearly half its contributors.

Martinez spent $12.3 million in the campaign and narrowly defeated Betty Castor of Tampa.

In a statement released Tuesday night in anticipation of the audit’s release Wednesday, Martinez said his campaign has addressed all deficiencies and corrected financial reports.

“This campaign takes seriously the substance of the matter and made changes subsequent to that election to ensure full and timely compliance with all campaign finance laws in the future,” Martinez said.

This year, at the behest of President Bush, the first-term senator also became chairman of the national Republican Party.

The Tampa Tribune revealed the problems with Martinez’s campaign finances in a November 2005 story.

Read more at TBO

In a preliminary ruling on the Election Day 2002 phone-jamming lawsuit, a judge yesterday denied a request from Republicans to restrict the potential damages awarded Democrats to the dollar cost of the lost phone service.

The civil suit related to the phone-jamming is scheduled to begin Monday in Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester. State Democrats have asked the court to award them up to $4.1 million for the damages associated with a Republican program to block Democratic phone banks in New Hampshire to thwart the party’s get-out-the-vote effort.

The defendants - a group that includes the state Republican Party, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee - filed a motion to exclude evidence beyond the phone’system damages and restrict the potential award to less than $5,000, which they calculated as the value of the lost phone lines. Republicans said they blocked 13 Democratic phone lines for 82 minutes before they called off the illegal program.

Continue reading here

Looks like the Republicans are continuing on with their organization of corruption. Who was chosen to become the new Republican National Committee chair? None other than Mel Martinez. A man who could write a book on illegal campaign contributions and corruption.

He is embroilled in a scandal involving a Miami firm, PBS&J, that the government has been very generous to. From the September 19, 2006 Miami Herald:

A former top executive of giant Miami engineering firm PBS&J was charged Monday in a $36 million embezzlement scheme and in the contribution of $11,000 to the campaign of Florida U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez through “strawmen.”

Not to mention his name being dropped by Bob Ney in the Abramoff scandal. Of course, Martinez “doesn’t recall” the meeting with Ney.

Oh, and then there’s the Federal Election Commission audit he’s deep into. Supposedly, ole Mel liked to underreport expenditures and lie about campaign contributions, stating he had more in the till than he had in the till.

Not to mention the Bacardi deal.

Yep……looks like the Republicans have picked the right guy to keep things on the up and up!! They’re actually getting WORSE!!! The 2008 election should be vedddddy interesting, to say the least.