TheDC Morning

TheDC Morning: The Alex Jones Endowed Professor of Lunacy

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
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1.) The Alex Jones Endowed Professor of Lunacy  — No such position exists — a fact that makes TheDC Morning a little bit more hopeful about the world — but if it ever does, FAU’s James Tracy already has a lock on it. TheDC’s Eric Owens reports:

“Florida Atlantic University is quite obviously the worst place in the United States to attend college. The school’s claim to infamy — after last month, anyway — is that the administration tried to punish a student who expressed discomfort with a professor’s assignment to stomp on a piece of paper bearing the word ‘Jesus.’ Turns out, Florida Atlantic has problems that are a lot bigger than a little Jesus-stomping. Take wackadoodle communications professor James Tracy, for example. As The College Fix reports, Tracy has taken to his personal blog, Memory Hole, to question official accounts of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. In the blog, which isn’t affiliated with FAU, Tracy argues that the amount of damage captured on video cannot be reconciled with the homemade bombs that authorities say caused the damage. More likely, the tenured professor says, what happened in Boston was a ‘mass casualty drill.'”

Read more about the “great” professor’s theory. Incidentally, he sounds like a perfect candidate for the academic board of a certain former Texas congressman’s Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

2.) There’s more Weiner — He’s the joke that keeps on giving — and it appears the world’s most infamous tweeter tweeted more than we knew. TheDC’s Alexis Levinson reports:

“The world may not have seen the last of Anthony Weiner’s nether regions. According to Politico, the former congressman admitted in an interview with RNN-TV’s Dominic Carter that there may be more pictures of his private parts, like the one he accidentally tweeted for all the world to see, floating around, should some enterprising reporter go looking for them. ‘If reporters want to go try to find more, I can’t say that they’re not going to be able to find another picture, or find another … person who may want to come out on their own, but I’m not going to contribute to that. The basics of the story are not gonna change,’ Weiner said in the interview.”

3.) The difference between two weeks before and after an election — It’s the difference between Vanilla ice cream and poisoned ice cream. TheDC’s Alexis Levinson reports:

“On Wednesday morning, with two weeks until Election Day, Mark Sanford held a debate with a cardboard cutout. To protest of the fact that Sanford’s Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, has agreed to only one debate with the former South Carolina governor, Sanford held a debate with a poster of Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, with whom Colbert Busch is aligned, he said. Sanford and Colbert Busch are battling to become the next U.S. representative of South Carolina’s First Congressional District. ‘My opponent continues to run a stealth campaign, avoiding public appearances and refusing to commit to televised forums for the benefit of 1st district voters,’ Sanford said in a press release. ‘Since Elizabeth Colbert Busch refuses to articulate her views publicly, we are left to draw inferences for what she stands for on the basis of the groups that have made substantial monetary investments on her behalf.'”

Right now, this is a cute stunt. But be forewarned governor: If you continue holding open air debates with card board people in the weeks following a loss to Busch, it will begin to appear more crazy than cute.

4.) Joe Scarborough, mind-changer — Joe Scarborough holds a different position than he once did on a current issue in the news. (Hint: It’s gun control.) TheDC’s Jeff Poor reports:

“Over the past four months, former Florida Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough has used his ‘Morning Joe’ program on MSNBC as a platform to be an outspoken critic of the National Rifle Association and anyone else standing in the way of what he calls ‘common sense’ gun control legislation. On more than one occasion over the past month, Scarborough has accused NRA-loyal Republicans of putting the interests of ‘rapists’ ahead of other Americans. … But Scarborough hasn’t always been so passionate about restricting gun rights. In fact, prior to the 2003 start of his cable television career, he was among the most vehement defenders of gun rights. In National Rifle Association questionnaires obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller — dated August 23, 1994, September 2, 1994, and June 7, 2000 — Scarborough declared his strong opposition to any federal effort to restrict gun rights.”

Whatever you think of Joe’s drastic change of heart, we should all be able to agree that suggesting the GOP is putting the interests of rapists over the interests of ordinary Americans might be just a tad over the top. That is, unless Joe wants to explain what it was about rapists that made him fight for their interests in Congress over the interests of ordinary Americans.

5.) Tweet of Yesterday — J.P. Freire@JeffreyGoldberg Pervez Musharraf won’t stop emailing me either, but he’s asking me for a beginning investment of $200,000. You too?

6.) Today in North Korean News — BREAKING: “U.S. Will Again Suffer Defeat: Nepali Paper”

VIDEO: Bill O’Reilly unloads on CAIR executive director Nihad Awad

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Jamie Weinstein