Selected Republicans And Republican Candidates For Office

* This is a sitting Republican U.S. Senator from Indiana:

U.S. Sen. Mike Braun: SCOTUS should leave abortion, interracial marriage to states.

(Source NPR affiliate WFYI of Indianapolis). Note also that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is in an interracial marriage.

* At least four notable GOP candidates this election cycle have horrific histories of domestic violence.

Missouri's US Senate hopeful Eric Greitens . . . had to resign as governor after a woman accused him of tying her up and taking her photograph as potential blackmail material if she told anyone about their affair. But the AP got its hands on an affidavit filed by Greitens's ex-wife Sheena Greitens in the custody dispute over their two children, and it is really, really ugly.

Prof. Greitens, a China expert who relocated to Austin where she teaches at the University of Texas, did manage to extricate herself and her children from the marriage. But now her ex-husband is seeking custody of the children, and she's alleging a shocking pattern of abuse at the end of their relationship.

“Prior to our divorce, during an argument in late April 2018, Eric knocked me down and confiscated my cell phone, wallet and keys so that I was unable to call for help or extricate myself and our children from our home,” she wrote. “I became afraid for my safety and that of our children at our home.”

She went on to describe “behavior [that] included physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then-3-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by his hair.”

For the record, Greitens denies the allegations.

“His ex-wife is engaged in a last-ditch attempt to vindictively destroy her ex-husband,” the candidate's spokesman Dylan Johnson told the AP. “Eric has always been a great Dad, who loves his boys and has always put them first, and that is why he is filing for full custody of his children.”

Prof. Greitens describes the ex-governor as becoming mentally unstable as his political fortunes unraveled, threatening to harm himself if she didn't publicly support him and implying that he might hurt the children if she didn't do what he asked. 

At one point, Eric Greitens made a reference to the fact that he had the children — and she didn’t — while trying to persuade Sheena Greitens to delete emails she had sent to the family therapist seeking help, according to the affidavit.

“Eric threatened to accuse me of child abuse if I did not delete the emails and convince the therapist to delete them,” she wrote.

The professor also describes her ex-husband hiding a gun in the house, so that “multiple people other than myself were worried enough to intervene to limit Eric’s access to firearms.”

Senate candidate Sean Parnell dropped out of the race in Pennsylvania in November after similar allegations of spousal and child abuse by his ex-wife. Not to be confused with Herschel Walker in Georgia, whose ex-wife alleged pervasive abuse during their marriage, including having him hold a gun to her head and threatening to "blow her fucking brains out." Or Max Miller, a congressional candidate in Ohio, who White House comms flack Stephanie Grisham alleges abused her during their relationship.

From Wonkette (if you don't trust it, click through to the sources linked).

* Trump's former chief of staff appears to have engaged in voter registration fraud. "North Carolina state investigators have launched an investigation into Mark Meadows’ voter registration after reports raised questions about the former White House chief of staff’s status." He appears to have engaged in voter registration fraud.

* Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters, who is a Republican candidate for Secretary of State (the chief elections officer in Colorado), and her Deputy County Clerk Belinda Knisley, have been indicted (in charges brought by Mesa County's Republican District Attorney) of multiple counts of election administration related crimes. Peters also faces contempt of court charges for violating a court order and then  lying to a judge about it, in a related proceeding. She has a decent chance of becoming the GOP nominee for Secretary of State in Colorado (More details here). The same source notes that:

Another Colorado clerk — Dallas Schroeder of Elbert County — has also admitted to making two copies of his county’s voting system hard drive. Schroeder said he gave one copy to his own attorney and another to an unidentified “private attorney.” 

Griswold filed a lawsuit in February to force Schroeder to name the private attorney, retrieve the copies of the hard drives and provide copies of communications with non-county employees who assisted Schroeder in making the copies. She argued that Schroeder’s behavior had created “an ongoing risk that the copies of the voting system ... are being exploited by unknown actors to uncover system vulnerabilities that might be used to undermine voters’ confidence in Colorado’s secure elections.” 

In court documents, Schroeder’s lawyer has said that he believes his actions were “authorized by law and appropriate under the circumstances to preserve election records of the November 2020 election.”

* A conservative and Republican led school board majority in Douglas County, Colorado, an affluent and conservative exurb of Denver, has been placed under a preliminary injunction for conduct violating the state's open meetings law. 

* Then there is this guy: "Michigan GOP candidate says he tells daughters to ‘lie back and enjoy it’ if rape is inevitable. Robert Regan, a Republican favored to win a seat in the Michigan House, made the comments while trying to make an analogy about abandoning efforts to decertify the 2020 election."

* Colorado's representative in Congress from the 3rd Congressional District (mostly representing Colorado's Western Slope) "Lauren Boebert says, like Ukraine, Canada and U.S. ‘need freedom and need to be liberated’" She didn't get a high school diploma and earned her GED a month before the 2020 primary. She and her husband both have minor criminal records. She disgraced Colorado with disorderly conduct during the State of the Union speech this year. She has been fined for violating U.S. House rules like a ban on carrying firearms on the floor of the U.S. House and not wearing masks on the U.S. House floor. The list of her infamous acts could continue for a long time and include some probably collusive acts with the January 6 capitol rioters (more than 700 of whom are now facing criminal charges). She makes up fake military ranks (note that she votes on the U.S. Defense Budget).

* A former Presidential candidate for the Republican Party despairs that: "'I've got morons on my team': Romney blasts fellow GOP members for attending White nationalist event and supporting Putin":

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah on Sunday blasted his fellow GOP members who attended a White nationalist event and those who support Russia President Vladimir Putin as the country invades Ukraine. 

"Look, there is no place in either political party for this White nationalism or racism. It's simply wrong ... it's evil as well," Romney told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." "(Rep.) Marjorie Taylor Greene and (Rep.) Paul Gosar, I don't know them, but I'm reminded of that old line from the 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' movie where - where one character says, 'Morons, I've got morons on my team.' And I have to think anybody that would sit down with White nationalists and speak at their conference was certainly missing a few IQ points." 

The comment from Romney follows criticism from Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican, of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona for speaking at the America First Political Action Conference that took place in Orlando, Florida and was organized by White nationalist Nick Fuentes. Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, also a Republican, criticized Greene and Gosar. Greene spoke at the event in person and Gosar, who attended the same conference last year, appeared through pre-recorded remarks.

"As Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep Paul Gosar speak at this white supremacist, anti-Semitic, pro-Putin event, silence by Republican Party leaders is deafening and enabling," Cheney tweeted Saturday. "All Americans should renounce this garbage and reject the Putin wing of the GOP now."

Marjorie Taylor Greene was in concert with Lauren Boebert in their State of the Union mischief and has, if I recall correctly, been censured by the U.S. House for violent threats directed at other U.S. House members.

* In El Paso County, Colorado, first-term incumbent GOP Rep. Mary Bradfield representing southeastern Colorado Springs"narrowly missed making this year’s Republican primary ballot, losing at the GOP assembly on Saturday to an intra party challenger [Karl Dent] who was convicted in August of felony trespassing and who currently faces misdemeanor charges including allegedly violating a protection order. . . . In addition to the less than a year old felony conviction for trespassing, Dent is also reportedly facing misdemeanor animal cruelty charges, and yet another charge for violating a protection order granted to an ex-girlfriend."

* And to close today's selective recount, here's a reminder that criminal activity by politicians is not a bipartisan matter, in which both major parties are equivalent: