Archive for the ‘Cynthia McKinney’ Category

My AJC colleague Jeremy Redmon says the GOP primary race for the 4th Congressional District is starting to get a little nasty. He sends this report:

In an interview this week, businessman Greg Pallen pointed to a 16-year-old Chapter 7 bankruptcy filed by his opponent, Chris Vaughn.

“How does he expect the American people to put him in office and manage the financial and fiscal issues that he is going to need to manage when he can’t even manage his own fiscal and financial responsibilities?” said Pallen, 43, a businessman from Oxford.

Vaughn said his family has since “rebuilt our life and rebuilt our credit.”

“We took a couple of major hits – and a very hard season in our life,” he said. “We had a family member who was very sick and [we] made some changes to help them and never could catch up.”
Meanwhile, Pallen complained about a postcard that Vaughn’s campaign has been distributing. The card aimed at GOP primary voters declares that Vaughn is “the only …

Continue reading 4th District GOP race: Who’s a Republican, and who isn’t? »

Bill O’Reilly at Fox News on Wednesday took up the topic of former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and her recent visits to Libya and Iran to denounce U.S. policy.

O’Reilly surmised that Iran was funding some of her activities, but in the end, he and his producer conceded that no federal laws had been broken:

Good for a giggle: Note the quick look of skepticism on the face of McKinney’s Iranian questioner when the ex-House member asserts, as proven fact, that the hidden hand of “the authorities” was behind the assassinations of JFK, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

You’ll note that McKinney leaves out the 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian-born Palestinian angered by RFK’s support of Israel. No doubt it was diplomatic concession on her part.

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U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Savannah, may have just named his price for participating in any effort to force Democratic colleague John Barrow to give up his Savannah residence in …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: Bill O’Reilly decides Cynthia McKinney isn’t a traitor – just tasteless »

Gov. Nathan Deal’s office confirmed Monday that he has asked Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed to accompany him to Washington next week – for a strategy session on Port of Savannah funding with a bipartisan assembly of Georgia’s congressional delegation.

And if Reed could help arrange a meeting with other Washington notables, that would be nice, too.

“We’ve asked for a meeting with the president,” said Deal spokesman Brian Robinson. “The mayor has strong relations with President Obama. But obviously, that’s up to the White House at this point.”

Deal and Reed will be seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to deepen the Port of Savannah, so that the coastal transportation hub can handle larger ships set to begin passing through the Panama Canal in 2014.

The Democratic-Republican duo will also be paying a June 1 visit to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, to persuade him that Georgia is indeed serious about bringing mass transit – i.e., rail …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: Nathan Deal, Kasim Reed to make tag-team visit to D.C. »

Following a week-old Republican tradition, newly announced presidential candidate Herman Cain last night corrected a statement he’d made on a Sunday interview program only a few hours before.

The venue of his error was “Fox News Sunday,” during a debut appearance that strayed into foreign affairs and the question of whether ousted Palestinians should have the “right of return” to Israel.

See the entire 13-minute clip here:

Said Cain, after bashing President Barack Obama’s speech last week on the topic of peace negotiations:

”I don’t think [Israelis] have a big problem with people returning. The issue is there are some things that they simply do not want to give in on.

Actually, Israel has a very large problem with the “right of return,” as Cain acknowledged last night:

”All Israeli governments have rejected the ‘right’ of large numbers of Arabs or Palestinians to return to what is now the state of Israel. Such an en masse return would unbalance …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: Herman Cain corrects his Sunday statement on Israel »

A majority of voters in metro Atlanta would approve of giving mayors or county commissions the power to take control of dysfunctional school systems, according to poll results posted at Blogging While Blue, the new Democratic blog started by former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin.

Fifty-four percent of voters in the 10-county area would support the measure, while 30 percent would oppose it.

In Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta and a school system that has been placed on probation by its accrediting agency, the margin for approval of school system takeovers rises to 60 percent.

While just posted, the survey is nearly two months old – conducted Feb. 2-4 by 20/20 Insight. That’s before Mayor Kasim Reed publicly raised the topic of a City Hall takeover, should the school system lose its accreditation this summer – and before legislation began moving that would extend such power to the governor.

But it was conducted after the Southern Association of Colleges and …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: Metro Atlanta voters support school takeovers »

Former Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Decatur has agreed to pay $6,000 to the Federal Election Commission for violations during her failed 2006 reelection campaign, according to documents released Monday.

My AJC colleague Bob Keefe says FEC records show that McKinney and her campaign treasurer, Joan Christian, agreed to settle a case involving $21,300 in contributions from individuals and political action committees.

The contributions from unnamed donors exceeded federal campaign contribution limits of $2,100 per person, according to the FEC.

According to a conciliation agreement released Monday that was signed by an attorney for McKinney and by FEC officials, the former congresswoman also did not properly disclose receipts, reimbursements and cash it had on hand. The campaign also made numerous other errors in its finance reports.

The FEC would have sought “a substantially higher” civil penalty in the case, according to the settlement, but didn’t because …

Continue reading Cynthia McKinney agrees to $6k fine for ‘06 violations »

A television station in Capetown, South Africa is reporting that former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has found another country that doesn’t want her around:

A controversial former member of the American congress and a 2008 presidential candidate, Cynthia McKinney, was abruptly removed from a South African Airways flight on Tuesday.

McKinney, who stood against President Barack Obama at an early stage in the race for the US presidency, was barred from boarding an SAA flight to Johannesburg in Washington DC.

She would have travelled to South Africa to act as international guest speaker on the Channel 4 network’s first Palestinian Struggle and Human Spirit film festival, which will be held in Athlone from Friday to Sunday.

McKinney spent a week in an Israeli jail earlier this year, after being swept up by that country’s navy while trying to pass through a blockade into Gaza.

Walter Jones with Morris News Service has this disturbing bit of news this morning:

An illegal …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: South Africa refuses Cynthia McKinney »