Tag: keep Virginia blue

Posted on

Comstock stays mum during congressional committee attack on integrity of FBI

By Julie Galdo:

Two of northern Virginia’s Congress members defended our federal intelligence agencies against vicious insinuations of corruption last month during the aggressive questioning of FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok. But our region’s third member of Congress was nowhere to be seen.

Gerry Connolly called the hearing “a new low” for Congress

Strzok came across as a dedicated Federal employee who made a dumb mistake by expressing his personal feelings about politics in his official email account. But his Republican inquisitors tried to build that into a wholesale indictment of the integrity and professionalism of our most trusted institutions.

Strzok pointed out that that sabotaging an investigation would require everyone above him to sign off on his effort to subvert the investigation all the way to the director of the FBI. “Multiple layers…section chiefs, unit chiefs, case agents and analysts–all of whom were involved in these decisions.

Don Beyer also defended the integrity of the FBI

But several of the Republican House and Judiciary Oversight Committee members were undaunted by reason and continued their assault on Strzok. Their logic can only lead to the conclusion that you can’t trust anyone in the intelligence and national security communities — that they are all motivated by politics and not love of country.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-11) was having none of it. At the hearing he called the Republican questioning an attempt at “destruction of the reputation of the FBI” and “a new low for the United States Congress.” Don Beyer called it a hearing that “had no purpose other than to give Fox News coverage of Republicans attacking the FBI and DOJ.”

Meanwhile, Barbara Comstock was notable for her absence

But their colleague Barbara Comstock (R-10) did not have the courage or decency to stand up for the intelligence community. Does Comstock truly believe that many of the men and women who serve in intelligence and national security are not to be trusted? Or is she simply not be trusted to stand for what she knows is right?

 

From The Blue View

Posted on

Time to vote for politicians who support gun safety

By Karen Kirk:

“VOTE THEM OUT” was the rallying cry of speakers and protesters as more than 100 people gathered outside of the NRA Headquarters in Fairfax Saturday in support of gun safety.

“This nation breathes the oxygen that is the promise of liberty and right now, our people are suffocating,” said speaker Micaela Lattimer, a 17-year-old Latina from Maryland. “We’re not free when gunshots pierce classrooms. We’re not free when people are criminalized just for being black or brown. We’re not free when gun violence in Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore and Detroit goes ignored,” said Lattimer, speaking in English and Spanish.

“We point cameras to schools whose windows are shattered but muffle the voices who cry black lives matter. When black activists protested police brutality they were met with full riot gear and teargas,” said Lattimer, who helped organize the rally.

“To my fellow young people, it is now our job to actively urge those around us to vote and to lobby legislators and question authority,” she said. “Eternal vigilance is necessary to protect our freedom.”

“To elected officials, we the people are calling on you to develop and carry out policy that prevents a firearm from getting into the cold grip of a domestic abuser, policy that prevents the phone call telling a family their child was gunned down at age 16, policy that protects black youths from the shackles of criminalization and policy that keeps hateful people from committing a massacre. Most of all, policy that promotes humanization and education.”

“If you wish to stay in office, we demand that you actively protect our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Lattimer said.

Read the rest at The Blue View

Posted on

Jennifer Wexton plans to repeal and replace Comstock

By Karen Kirk:

“Good afternoon. I’m Jennifer Wexton and I’m going to repeal and replace Barbara Comstock,” the Virginia State senator told the audience at The Good Ole Girls brunch on Sunday at the Tysons Corner Marriott.

Jennifer Wexton greets a guest at The Good Ole Girls brunch (Photos by Karen Kirk)

Wexton, who is running for the CD-10 seat, said that like many of us after the 2016 election, she just wanted to pull the covers up over her head. “But I think most of us realized that we can’t just stay under the covers for the next 4 years so we ultimately came out and seeing what the administration has been doing — the attacks on the institutions that are here to keep us safe, institutions like the free press, institutions like our intelligence community, and attacks on civility, the rule of law, immigrants, women, the environment, I knew I had to step up again and run for Congress.”

“So this is going to be an election about contrasts because Barbara Comstock and I are both women and that’s about where the similarity ends.”

  • On women’s health:“Barbara Comstock has said more than once that she wants Roe vs Wade overturned, and with Donald Trump making appointments to the Supreme Court, she may get her wish so it’s more important now than ever that we have members of Congress who are pro-choice and fight to do things like fully fund Planned Parenthood. I will do those things in Congress.”
  • On health care: “Barbara Comstock has voted 6 times to repeal Affordable Care Act and rip health care coverage away from millions of Americans. She voted to eliminate the individual mandate which has spiked insurance premiums for everybody and thrown the individual markets into chaos. I on the other hand along with (Loudon, VA Delegate) Karrie Delaneyand my friends in the General Assembly have expanded access to affordable healthcare to 400,000 Virginians.
  • On guns: “Barbara Comstock is the top recipient in money from the NRA — bought and paid for by the gun lobby. I have been fighting for years for common sense gun violence prevention and gun safety legislation. I will do the same thing in Congress.”

Wexton then outlined the contrasts on how each candidate deals with this president, saying “because while drafting our Constitution, our forefathers foresaw that we could have a president like Trump, but what they didn’t see was that we could have a Congress that enabled him.”

Read the rest at The Blue View

Posted on

College students need to apply for absentee ballot

The author’s son Ben, preparing to return to college

By Stephanie Witt Sedgwick, from The Blue View

If it’s August, it’s time to start getting ready to send your college student back to school.

The No. 1 item on the To Do List: Have them apply for an absentee ballot or register to vote ASAP and wait a week or two until they are registered and then have them apply.

It’s fast. It’s easy.

Go to: Register to Vote and Apply for Absentee Ballots

Documents: Your student will need their social security number and driver’s license number

Reason for applying to vote absentee: Student attending college or university outside of locality of residence.

Address: Your student can receive their ballot at their home address or college address.

Plans change. Don’t count on your student coming home to vote or voting in person absentee during fall break.

Posted on

Be ready for Comstock to use smear tactics in 10th district race against Wexton

By Rob Abbot:

As the race between Jennifer Wexton and Barbara Comstock to represent Virginia’s 10th district in Congress heats up, we need to be ready for Comstock to revert to her usual vicious and false campaign tactics.

To see her modus operandi clearly, you need look no farther than her last contest. Just last month, she faced a relative unknown, retired Air Force pilot Shak Hill, in the Republican primary for the seat. Apparently worried that her funding and name recognition advantages would not see her through, she unleashed a scurrilous attack on Hill two weeks before the election, using a puerile nickname (“Shady Shack”),  childish insults (“creepy”; “can’t win”) and insinuendos that her opponent was a pornographer.

This was business as usual for Comstock. In her five previous election contests –three for state delegate followed by two for Congress — she showed an aptitude for finding a small chink in her opponent’s armor and magnifying it to create a misleading, even slanderous narrative that portrays the opponent as personally dishonorable. Sadly, these reprehensible tactics have worked —  she has been successful in all these races.

Here are some examples:

— In her first campaign in 2009, for  Virginia House of Delegates, Comstock accused her opponent of abetting child molesters. In truth, the opponent had voted for an austerity budget that provided for early release of non-violent offenders.

— In 2011, running for re-election, she maintained that her opponent had supported raising taxes –even though the opponent had never held public office.

–In 2013, running for a third term in the Virginia house, she painted her opponent as a tax cheat. The reality is that the opponent’s spouse had been late paying a property tax bill.

Even before running for office herself, Comstock had become a veteran in using smear tactics against political enemies. As an investigator for a Republican Congress member  in the 1990s she spearheaded massive, coordinated efforts to bring down President Bill Clinton with fake “scandals” such as Filegate, Travelgate, and Whitewater.

Media accounts of her pulling all-nighters poring over thousands of pages of subpoenaed documents somehow paint this behavior as endearing. In truth, Comstock built her career and reputation by trying to tear down Democratic opponents, not on the basis of policy disagreements but by suggesting that the opponent is morally repugnant and unfit to serve.

Read the rest at The Blue View

Posted on

Trump is out of step with Republican voters on environmental protection

By Vivian Thomson:

My mother, who passed away in May at the age of 100, was a lifelong Republican. But she was also a conservationist and environmentalist who was deeply concerned about climate change. She could not abide pollution and the waste of resources. She was horrified by Scott Pruitt and by the president’s blinkered support for coal.

It turns out that my Republican conservationist mother’s opinions reflect Republican voters’ views generally.

As of this spring, a Yale University-George Mason University poll showed that 69 percent of Republicans support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Even in 2013, by a margin of almost two to one, Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents supported taking action to reduce fossil fuel use. In 2017, 62 percent of Trump voters said they support regulating or taxing greenhouse gases.

Before the 2015 climate talks in Paris, 85 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans, and 71 percent of survey respondents overall agreed that reaching an international accord to limit global warming was important.

The bottom line is that, while Democratic voters tend to feel more strongly about these issues than Republicans, there is widespread bipartisan support for reducing greenhouse gas emission, advancing our reliance on renewables, and meeting our commitments to the global community.

What these poll results also signify is that many national Republican politicians are not only hiding from well-established scientific and court findings, they are out of step with of their constituents.

Republicans like Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush took the high road on public health and environmental issues because of strong public support that crossed party lines. At the state level, the three states that lead in wind energy, with 41 percent of installed capacity—Texas, Oklahoma, and Iowa—were counted in Trump’s column.

Read the rest at The Blue View

Posted on

When we knock, the House is a lock

The primaries are over, summer is here, and it’s time to buckle down and take back the House and Senate. There are lots of opportunities to volunteer, and one of the most important things you can do is get out there and canvass. This means pounding the pavement and knocking on your neighbors’ doors to make sure everyone knows how critical their votes are in 2018.

Taking back the House starts with taking the 10th, as Virginia’s 10th Congressional District has two precincts right here in Hunter Mill. If we want Barbara Comstock out, canvassing for Sen. Jennifer Wexton will get it done.

Taking back the Senate means reelecting Tim Kaine, which takes everyone across all of Virginia. As we learned in 2016, we can take nothing for granted, and beating neo-Confederate Corey Stewart requires running up the score right here in Hunter Mill. Knocking doors helps us do that.

There are several canvassing events already scheduled (here are sign up links for Saturday and Sunday), and more are coming throughout the summer. Keep your eyes on the Hunter Mill calendar for these opportunities, and contact Maddy White at maddy.white@virginiavictory.org or 571-299-9490 if you have any questions or concerns about participating.

We look forward to seeing you out there!

Posted on

Photo Essay: Thousands rally in Washington, D.C., to bring families together

Tens of Thousands of demonstrators rallied Saturday in Washington, D.C., to protest the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy and separating children from their parents.

On a sweltering day in the capital, the crowd gathered at Lafayette Square across from the White House to protest separating thousands of children from their parents at the border and the new plan to detain families together. Some 600 “Families Belong Together” rallies were held around the country.

The rally began with Sebastian Medina-Tayac of the Piscataway Indian Nation addressing the crowd in Spanish and English, reminding people that this is a nation of immigrants. Then he beat the drum.

Then Jocelyn, an undocumented immigrant who didn’t want to give her full name, told of how she was separated from her son when she came to the United States from Brazil last August and she was held at a detention facility in Texas. She said that she was told that her son could be adopted. It took 9 months for them to be reunited.

Celebrities Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the smash musical “Hamilton,” singer Alicia Keys and actress America Ferrera were among the rally speakers. Miranda sang a lullaby from “Hamilton,” Keys read a letter from a mother separated from her son and Ferrera talked about being a new mother, her Honduran roots and her duty to defend justice.

After the rally, protesters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue past the Trump International Hotel to the Department of Justice.

Read the rest at The Blue View

Posted on

Wexton ahead of Comstock by 10 points in new Monmouth University poll

Leading in Monmouth poll, Jennifer Wexton has plenty to smile about.  (Photo by Karen Kirk)

Jennifer Wexton is leading U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock among all potential voters by 10 points, 49 to 39, with 12 percent undecided or supporting someone else in Virginia’s CD-10 race, according to a Monmouth University poll released Tuesday, June 26.

Half of the voters in CD-10 identify themselves as independents, and Virginia Democratic State Sen. Wexton leads among this group by 45% to 36%. She also has stronger support among her fellow Democrats (97% to 1% for Comstock) than Comstock has among her fellow Republicans (85% to 10% for Wexton).

Comstock’s prospects appear to be hampered by voters’ negative views of President Trump – 53% disapprove of the job he has done compared to 42% who approve in the latest Monmouth poll.

Voters also express a preference to have Democrats (42%) rather than Republicans (34%) control of Congress.

Wexton is leading among white college graduates by 50% to 41%. She also leads among black, Hispanic, and Asian voters regardless of education level by 62% to 21%.

Read the rest at The Blue View

Posted on

Jennifer Wexton draws stark contrasts with Comstock on issues

Jennifer Wexton says it’s time for Democrats to take back the House. (Photo by Karen Kirk)

By Karen Kirk:

“With Donald Trump in the White House, Scott Pruitt heading the EPA, Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education and Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, I am very concerned about how much damage is going to be done to our country in the next couple of years and the only way we’re going to stop it is to take back the House,” said Jennifer Wexton at a breakfast Monday sponsored by Dulles Area Democrats.

And there’s a good chance that Virginia State Sen. Wexton, the Democratic candidate will defeat U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock in CD-10 this November.

According to a Monmouth University poll released Tuesday, Wexton is leading Comstock by 10 points — 49 to 39, with 12 percent undecided or supporting someone else — even though most voters said they had no opinion of Wexton. Comstock’s prospects are weighted down by voters’ negative views of President Trump – 53% disapprove of the job he has done compared to 42% who approve in the latest poll.

Wexton drew stark contrasts with her opponent on the issues.

“I have been fighting down in Richmond for gun violence prevention legislation for years,” said Wexton. “I never received a dime from the NRA nor will I. I have received failing grades from them every time. Barbara Comstock has an A rating from the NRA. Despite her relatively short tenure in Congress, she is one of the top recipients of funding from them.”

“She is terrible on the environment. She has a zero from the League of conservation voters, and I have 100%,” Wexton said. “On women’s health, the same thing. She is zero, she’s voted to defund Planned Parenthood. I am a NARAL champion and have been supported by them and have fought in Richmond to eliminate unconstitutional restrictions on a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion.”

“So there are great contrasts here and the stakes are pretty high and I need your help because she is not going to be an easy person to beat, said Wexton, who beat five other Democratic candidates by a wide margin in the Democratic Primary June 10.

Wexton answered questions from the audience at the Amphora Diner in Herndon about her chances of winning in November. She said the day she announced her candidacy, the Cook Report moved its rating for the CD-10 race from lean Republican to a toss-up, citing her entry in the race as their reason.

Read the rest at The Blue View