Last Call

Yo dawg, Rand Paul heard you like rebuttals, so he's giving a rebuttal to Marco Rubio's rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union address.

Tea party leaders are turning to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, to deliver their message following President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, a speech that will compete with the official Republican response.

Paul will make his remarks soon after Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, wraps up the GOP response Tuesday night, a Paul spokeswoman confirms to CNN.

"We are giving a voice to the tea party movement when the mainstream media and the Republican establishment wants to write us off as dead," said Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express. This is the third year in a row that Kremer's organization has sponsored the tea party response.

The dueling GOP speeches come at a time when a very public rift is developing between the Republican establishment and conservative activists over the direction of the party. Some grassroots activists are specifically angry at Karl Rove and other Republicans for stating that they will choose sides in upcoming Republican primaries and only financially help candidates who have a chance of winning in the general election.

In Paul, tea party leaders have chosen a nationally known senator, who is identified more for his embrace of a libertarian ideology than aligning himself with his own political party's leaders.

The back-to-back addresses Tuesday night also features two young stars in the GOP, each of whom are expected to seriously consider running for the White House in 2016. 

Yes, let America get a good look at the "rising stars" of the GOP right now: a pandering poster Latino that his own party despises, and a quasi-racist hypocrite who wants states to be free to discriminate.  Sure.  Good luck against Hillary, boys.

Acceptable Levels Of Criminal Behavior

The same people screaming that background and identification checks will never, ever stop criminals from committing crimes with guns are hyperventilating over possible voter fraud in Ohio and the need for voter ID laws.

The Hamilton County Board of Elections is investigating 19 possible cases of alleged voter fraud following months of investigation after the 2012 election.

Twenty-eight subpoenas have been issued as a result of the investigation, which includes 19 Hamilton County voters and nine witnesses who still need to answer questions to satisfy the board.

The board started with 80 suspicious cases and now are down to 19. Officials say the majority of the cases turned out to be simple misunderstandings.

Melowese Richardson, a Madisonville resident, first learned of the allegations when approached by 9 On Your Side reporter Tom McKee Wednesday. Even though she admits to voting twice in the last election, she said the news came as surprise.

"I would think that something this important would come to me first and that I wouldn't have to be enlightened about this through you," said Richardson.

According to county documents, Richardson's absentee ballot was accepted on Nov. 1, 2012 along with her signature. On Nov. 11, she told an official she also voted at a precinct because she was afraid her absentee ballot would not be counted in time.

"There's absolutely no intent on my part to commit voter fraud," said Richardson.

The wingers promptly want the woman crucified on national television.  So we must have voter ID laws or...wait a minute.  If she voted absentee, and then voted in person, how would voter ID laws have stopped her at the polls?

Nobody seems to have an answer for that.  I wonder why.

Am-Bushed On The Internets

This is simultaneously awesome and horrific.

The apparent hack of several e-mail accounts has exposed personal photos and sensitive correspondence from members of the Bush family, including both former U.S. presidents, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Oh awesome.

Included in the hacked material is a confidential October 2012 list of home addresses, cell phone numbers, and e-mails for dozens of Bush family members, including both former presidents, their siblings, and their children. The posted photos and e-mails contain a watermark with the hacker’s online alias, “Guccifer.”

Correspondence obtained by the hacker indicates that at least six separate e-mail accounts have been compromised, including the AOL account of Dorothy Bush Koch, daughter of George H.W. Bush and sister of George W. Bush. Other breached accounts belong to Willard Heminway, 79, an old friend of the 41st president who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut; CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz, a longtime Bush family friend; former first lady Barbara Bush’s brother; and George H.W. Bush’s sister-in-law.

Both Heminway and Nantz corresponded with Bush, 88, about playing golf and visiting the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.

The hacked e-mails, sent between 2009 and 2012, include correspondence between Nantz and George W. Bush’s scheduler about an October 2010 golf outing in Dallas. One e-mail includes the street address for Bush, 66, as well as the four-digit code Nantz needed to enter at a security gate. A second e-mail includes details of where Nantz and Bush planned to have dinner after their Saturday golf outing.

One of the hacked Heminway e-mails was sent to him by Brit Hume, the Fox News political analyst, days after the 2012 presidential election. “Election outcome disappointing, but there are many silver linings,” Hume wrote in the November 9 e-mail.

Our liberal media?

Look folks, hacking the email accounts of the Bush family is probably one of the all time worst ideas I can think of.  Poppy Bush was former head of the CIA and well as president, and Dubya, well, he's a vindictive little jackass, so yeah, there will be a head rolling at some point.

But hey, some stronger privacy laws on the internet might be a good idea, yeah?

StupidiNews!

• California law enforcement officials continue to search near Big Bear Lake east of Los Angeles for the rogue ex-LAPD cop wanted for the deaths of three people.
• Cities from Philadelphia to Halifax, Nova Scotia are hunkering down for what could be the worst nor'easter blizzard in decades, forecast to drop more than 2 feet of snow.
• Pakistan's Supreme Court continues to struggle with the country's military leaders over secret detentions of suspected Islamic terrorists.
• Several German firms have sued Wall Street big mortgage banks over the global financial crisis as court cases wind through US courts.
• Adobe has issued a series of Flash Player emergency updates to plug security holes being exploited to install malware on PCs and Macs.