McCain Withdraws Support Of Mourdock Until He's Satisfied By An Apology

Sen. John McCain proves once again why he is a thorn in the side of the Republican Party since he deliberately threw the 2008 presidential election to the unqualified, ineligible impostor from the most corrupt elements of the Chicago political machine. McCain, who just campaigned on behalf of Richard Mourdock's Senate candidacy earlier this week, announced to CNN's Anderson Cooper that he will no longer support Mourdock until he is satisfied with a public apology and admission by Mourdock that he misspoke in last night's Senate debate when he stated that a woman's pregnancy resulting from a forcible rape was "God's intention." If Republicans by some stroke of luck manage to win control of the Senate in this year's election, the leadership should make sure that McCain receives no committee chairmanship.

O'Keefe Strikes Again: Takes Down Top Democratic Congressman's Son

Project Veritas' James O'Keefe's mission of proving that the Democratic Party's efforts to thwart state voter ID laws and other voter integrity laws are merely a cover for their conspiracy to commit wide scale vote fraud in elections across America took another step forward today. In his latest undercover investigative operation, O'Keefe catches the son of Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), Patrick Moran, openly embracing a vote fraud scheme to allow persons to vote in the name of registered voters who don't plan to vote in next month's presidential election. Moran served on the campaign of his father's re-election campaign working in offices shared by the re-election campaign of Barack Obama and Senate Democratic candidate Tim Kaine. Patrick resigned from his father's re-election campaign after O'Keefe made the undercover video public today.

Ballard To Announce Fire House Plan He Hatched In Secret With Pay-To-Play Contractors

You learned exclusively on this blog that Mayor Greg Ballard had hatched a secret deal with his pay-to-play contractor friends who bankroll his campaign committee, pay for his overseas junkets and lavish gifts, and free meals and country club memberships on him to locate the city's largest fire station from its current location on Mass Ave to the heart of the Lockerbie neighborhood to make room for new development along the booming Mass Ave. Tomorrow, Mayor Ballard will officially announce his plan, one that has already met with a resounding, unanimous vote of the Lockerbie People's Club in opposition to the proposed new site at College and Michigan Streets to make room for the development of the current fire station site. Ballard will be joined at tomorrow's press announcement by David Andrichik, head of the Mass Ave Merchants Association and Cassie Stockamp, President of the Athenaeum Foundation, neither of whom reside in our neighborhood, but both of whom stand to benefit financially from a massive investment of public funds in private development at a time when the City lacks resources to provide adequate public safety services for the City's residents. Ballard, his council friends who pushed the TIF expansion plan through the council and the pay-to-play contractors have all known for months that the new fire station would be relocated to Lockerbie, but they deliberately withheld that information from residents, leading them to believe that a project other than what was planned would occur on a vacant parcel in their neighborhood. Councilor Vop Osili, who represents the Lockerbie neighborhood and who sponsored the downtown TIF expansion ordinance that makes possible the latest publicly-financed private development efforts, has essentially told his constituents who are unhappy with the proposed new location for Fire Station #7 to drop dead. Osili claims the parcel on which the proposed fire station is to be built is on the side of the street represented by Councilor Joe Simpson, and that he has nothing to say about the proposed new site. By the way, since the media won't tell you this when tomorrow's announcement is made, the Ballard administration rejected competing development plans for the fire station site that did not require an investment of your public tax dollars. That's just how much of an enemy of the taxpayers this corrupt man has become.

UPDATE: The pay-to-play winners are developer Paul Kite, Schmidt Associates and J.C. Hart according to the IBJ's Cory Schouten. I hope he does his job and digs in a lot deeper than this initial article reveals. Yes, you are going to pay to build another parking garage that will only benefit the contractors and developers who are filling up Ballard's campaign pockets with cash.

Trump Offers $5 Million Charitable Donation In Exchange For Release Of Obama's College And Passport Records

Donald Trump promised a bombshell announcement today that could change the course of this year's presidential election. Instead, we got this video message from Trump offering to pay $5 million to the charity of President Barack Obama's choice if he releases his college applications and transcripts and his passport records by October 31. Oh, I see, we're going to have to wait another week to find out what Trump promised that he was going to disclose today at noon. Why am I not surprised? After all, he's kicking off another season of "The Apprentice" and we all know how much those ratings mean to him. Clearly, Trump is suggesting the bombshell information to which he has alluded is contained within those records, none of which is news to folks who have followed this blog. We're assuming that he is alluding to previous rumors that have circulated that Obama used an Indonesian passport and citizenship while attending schools in the United States after his mother returned him to the care of his grandparents in Hawaii when he was still a boy. Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother as a young child after she married an Indonesian citizen, Lolo Soetoro. According to Obama's school records from Indonesia, Soetoro was identified as his adopted father and his citizenship was listed as Indonesian. The media four years ago decided it didn't matter that Obama had acquired citizenship in another country, and our courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have all indicated that it does not disqualify him from serving as president. I have my own thoughts about what it means to be a natural born citizen, but until the Supreme Court decides to take the issue seriously, we're just pissing in the wind. Meanwhile, Trump will probably make an extra $5 million just by talking about an issue some of us have talked about for years without any compensation or fanfare--just as a matter of civic virtue. This is not "Let's Make A Deal," Mr. Trump. It's about something far more important than the dollar signs flashing in your eyes and your personal vanity.

Faux Outrage: Donnelly Co-Sponsored Legislation Denying Abortion Funding To Rape Victims

As I wrote last night, I cannot defend Richard Mourdock's statement on abortion during last night's debate that a child conceived as a consequence of rape was something "God intended." Mourdock's Democratic opponent, Joe Donnelly, was quick to condemn Mourdock's statement.  "What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape," Donnelly said in a statement released shortly after last night's debate. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is busy doing damage control this morning for Mourdock and his fellow Republicans, reminds us that it was Donnelly who co-sponsored legislation that would have denied abortion funding for victims of rape and incest. The bill's only exception was for "forcible rape." In defending his support of that legislation, Donnelly's campaign stated that the purpose of the legislation was "to ensure that no federal dollars go toward funding of abortion-related services. That was the original intention of the legislation, not to redefine rape." Mike Pence also supported this same legislation. Yes, both Donnelly and Mourdock are pro-life. Here's the statement released by Sen. John Cornyn, Chairman of the NRSC:

“Richard and I, along with millions of Americans – including even Joe Donnelly – believe that life is a gift from God.  To try and construe his words as anything other than a restatement of that belief is irresponsible and ridiculous.  In fact, rather than condemning him for his position, as some in his party have when it’s come to Republicans, I commend Congressman Donnelly for his support of life.   

“But this election is about big ideas and the reality that our country is going in the wrong direction.  If you support Obamacare, government bailouts, reckless spending and higher taxes than you should vote for Joe Donnelly.  But if you believe, as I do, that our government is too big, our taxes are too high, and we are passing an irresponsible debt onto future generations, than Richard Mourdock is your candidate to help get our country back on track.”   

Those Darn E-Mails

Several e-mails circulated by the State Department within hours of the September 11th terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi during which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed discussed the fact that an al Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for the attack. According to Fox News sources, at least 300-400 national security officials in our government received these e-mails. So why did the Obama administration deny the obvious for almost two weeks? Was their confidence in their ability to control the mainstream media message so high that it believed it could always control the message being communicated to the American people no matter how overwhelming the evidence was to the contrary?

You're On Your Own, Mr. Mourdock

I'm not even going to try to defend it. If our Republican candidates want to make absurd, thoughtless comments affording no exceptions in cases of rape and incest, then they can fend for themselves in defending their asinine statements. In what was otherwise an excellent performance in tonight's debate, Richard Mourdock had to open up his mouth and say that a pregnancy that resulted from a rape was intended by God. Mourdock's post-debate statement hardly helps his cause. "God creates life, and that was my point," Mourdock stated. "God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that He does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick," stated Richard Mourdock. Nobody has to twist your words to find issue with what you said. Richard. Is all I have to say is that if your wife or daughter were raped and you expected her to carry that baby to full term, then you're just sick in my mind. I find the practice of abortion as a means of birth control abhorrent, but I find forced conception even more abhorrent. It's the economy, stupid. Why do you have to get sidetracked with these sideshows? Have you learned nothing over the past six months?

Code Violations Reported At IMPD's East District Facility

The building that houses IMPD's East District roll call facility and the City's homeland security facility doesn't have an operating fire sprinkler system. As a consequence, a firefighter is paid to watch over the facility on a 24/7 basis. I mentioned rumors about this problem a couple of weeks ago when I told you how the Ballard administration was trying to pull a fast one on Lockerbie residents and move Fire District Station #7 from Mass Avenue to the heart of the eastern downtown neighborhood on the Lockerbie North parcel at Michigan and College Streets. WRTV's Jack Rinehart confirms the rumor in a report today:

Fire and building code violations are putting Metro police employees at risk and raising questions about government oversight at the renovation of the IMPD East District Roll Call facility.

The fire sprinkler system installed at East District Roll Call was never approved, and so far, it has failed to work, but Metro police and civilian employees were moved into the building anyway nine months ago.

A firefighter remains on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because the fire sprinkler system in the building will not send an alarm to an outside security company or fire dispatch.

According to city codes, the contractor is required to submit a plan before construction begins and the building is occupied.

"In most cases our plan review, they do review them. But for whatever reason, I don't think our plan reviewer had a chance to see these plans. I'm not sure (why not)," said Indianapolis Fire Department Fire Marshal Fred Pervine . . .

Rinehart reports that the contractor responsible for renovating the former Eastgate Mall for use by the City is paying $35 an hour to have a firefighter monitor the building 24/7. The City will be paying the building's owner $87,000 a month in rent beginning in January for a 25-year lease.

Star Endorsements In Indy Area House Races

The Star's endorsement doesn't have the weight it did during the heyday of the Pulliam media empire, but candidates still make an effort to get the newspaper's endorsement. There are several hotly-contested house races in the Indianapolis area following redistricting, and the Star has some interesting choices. In District 87, the Star picks Democrat Christina Hale over incumbent Republican Cindy Noe. The editors apparently don't think Noe did enough to criticize the Daniels administration's handling of child welfare issues. In District 92, the Star chooses Republican Tim Motsinger over Democrat Karlee Macer to take the seat now held by Phil Hinkle based on Motsinger's "depth of experience and better grasp of key issues." The Star favors Democrat Justin Moed over Republican A.J. Feeney-Ruiz to replace Mary Ann Sullivan, who chose to take on State Sen. Brent Waltz. I thought this would be a very competitive district, but Howey Politics rates it as a "Safe Democrat" seat. Finally, in District 100, which seems like it has been represented forever by John Day, the Star picks Republican Scott Keller over Democrat Dan Forestal. The Star likes Keller's "independence" and his support for raising taxes to finance a billion-dollar regional mass transit system. Keller is typically a very hard campaigner. Some folks have wondered why he has been blowing off neighborhood meetings and campaign forums attended by his Democratic opponent.