Category: Catherine Crabill

99th House of Delegates Mass Meeting: Terry Beatley, Catherine Crabill: tomato, tah-mah-toh?

For those that are unaware of Terry Beatley is, she’s the woman that managed to get a special grand jury convened in an attempt to indict a movie rental business in Lancaster County for creating a ‘public nuisance’ because they were renting pornographic movies. They managed to get an indictment against the business, but I can’t find out online what ended up happening with the case. Regardless, I’m sure the Commonwealth’s Attorney in Lancaster County enjoyed having his time wasted when he’s busy deciding whether he has the time to prosecute robbers, burglars, etc. You know, real criminals; not a case that arises from someone wanting the criminal justice system to dictate the business practices of a company.

She’s also the woman that sent letters to The Free Lance–Star et al. last year complaining about Albert Pollard’s “anti-family voting record”. Yeah, Pollard’s “anti-family” when he’s married with three kids versus his opponent at the time who’s a divorce attorney. Perhaps someone should tell Republicans in the 99th district that it isn’t politically wise to attack someone that routinely wins the district handily (consider the percentage of votes he has gotten: 53.0% [1999], 62.0% [2001], 65.1% [2003], 61.5% [2005], 57.2% [2008]) and is a personally likable guy as “anti-family”. But that’s a topic for a whole other post.

Anyway, to the point of this post: After being introduced by Representative Rob Wittman (R-1st), Terry Beatley gave at least a five minute speech on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. For those unfamiliar with the convention, it details various rights and protections that should be afforded to children by the signatories. The convention was signed by President Clinton back in 1995 but the Senate has so far failed to ratify the convention. The United States has, however, ratified two optional protocols of the convention, one prohibiting the use of child soldiers, and the other prohibiting child slavery, prostitution, and pornography and certain types of child labor.

I will say upfront that I’m not a fan of this convention based on my reading of it. For one, it provides that “[n]either capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age” (Article 37(a)), which means if this convention was ratified by the Senate, Lee Boyd Malvo would be eligible for release from prison (he’s currently doing life without the possibility of parole). (Capital punishment for offenses committed when someone was a juvenile was determined to be “cruel and unusual punishment” by the Supreme Court of the United States in Roper v. Simmons, so that’s not a possibility anymore anyway.)

But there’s a distinction from concerns such as those and what Terry Beatley had to say: For one, she said that the convention prohibits corporal punishment of children. If she had bother reading the bloody thing, she would see that nowhere in the convention is corporal punishment even mentioned. In fact, while 198 nations have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there are only 24 nations that actually prohibit corporal punishment. Doesn’t seem to be much correlation between ratifying the convention and prohibiting the practice of corporal punishment now does it?

Just like Catherine Crabill, who thinks that there “there is an agenda that is in our Public Law to surrender our country to the United Nations”, Terry Beatley thinks the United Nations is going to take your children from you.

Hopefully there aren’t as many nuts at the Republican Party of Virginia convention (that I will be live hate-blogging) as there were at the 99th Mass Meeting.

99th House of Delegates Mass Meeting: Video: One of the anti-Crabill speakers.

Here’s the video one of the speakers who opposed Crabill’s nomination. If only one of the three people that had gone up there had had the courage to actually repeat what she has said, even the stuff that has been posted on her own campaign site! Ugh…

I wasn’t able to record video of the other speakers because I was on the verge of running out of video on my camcorder.

99th House of Delegates Mass Meeting: Video: The Crabill supporters, including herself, speak.

Sorry, but the camera action got increasingly jerky as the meeting went on (you try to hold a camera steady for an hour!).

Just like a bunch of other ‘conservatives’, they want small government until it comes to something they want paid for, in this case money for the Chesapeake Bay. What’s the environment impact of plumbing millions and millions of dollars uselessly into the bay and refusing to actually do anything to fix the problem, like restricting fertilizing of land by farmers? Politicians think it’s great to harass Jim Bob if he wants to put fertilizer on his lawn (see Senator Stuart’s SB 135 of the 2008 session) but farmers can do whatever they want.

Carry me back to old Virginia/There’s where the cotton and corn and taters grow/There’s where obviously insane people are considered viable political candidates…

And damn those moderates that are attacking Crabill. You know, moderates such as me, Riley at Virginia Virtucon, and JR Hoeft at Bearing Drift.

And when the guy said that Crabill was ‘suspicious’ of the government just like Thomas Jefferson, I heard the unmistakable sound of Jefferson rolling over in his grave although the video camera didn’t pick it up.

How did I assassinate her character? By telling people what views she holds and quotes that she has said? That’s a weird definition of assassinating someone’s character.

99th House of Delegates Mass Meeting: Video: A lot of the delegates wanted to be sure that they could vote against the kook.

Again, the quality isn’t the best and you can hear me talking in the background (I’m the one with the slight country drawl).

Caroline County Chairman Jeff Sili originally started this discussion off by asking a question about the proposed meeting rules but I don’t remember the exact question Sili posed to Webb. Unfortunately, the portion of the video covering Sili’s question is messed up on the MiniDV tape. I guess that’s what I get for using a MiniDV tape that’s two or three years old.

Also, the woman that is seconding all the motions is part of the Caroline County delegation but I didn’t catch her name.

And for a great example of the quality of leadership this committee has, jump to 5:20 in part two and watch the whole room correct Allen Webb on what a Yes or No vote means on a particular motion.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Crabill Watch: The Free Lance–Star blasts her in an editorial.

The Free Lance–Star:

EPISCOPALIANS, “God’s frozen people,” are little given to flam- boyant displays of religiosity. But Albert Pollard, Anglican communicant, surely raised his hands skyward and whooped, “Thank you, Sweet Lord!” when news came last weekend that Republicans had named Catherine Crabill to challenge him in the 99th House District. Not every day does an incumbent get an opponent who calls the U.S. government “domestic terrorists.”

Ms. Crabill, a fan of the militia movement whose members scan the horizon for black helicopters, joins that peculiar pantheon of local GOP politicos given to excessive fervor and insights withheld from the rest of us. One thinks of the county supervisor, given to pious utterance, who left her husband to take up part-time residence in a government office (“He[God]’s not real happy with me right now,” she ruefully acknowledged, a big iron with bullets at her side), not to mention the supervisor candidate who declared public schools unconstitutional.

The weekend GOP convention in Montross might have named no one to take on Mr. Pollard, and should have. He will win hands-down; the nomination of Ms. Crabill, the sole GOP candidate, serves chiefly to bolster the entire party’s kook image. Moderate Republicans, who know the difference between a principle and a fetish, behold the party’s standard in the hands of a Catherine Crabill and lose much complexion (see photo below).

Democrats, of course, are often no summer on the Riviera themselves. But in the 99th, the uncomfortably familiar question once again arises for sensible Republicans: Where do we get these people?

Nice to see that this intrepid hate-blog gives them something to write about…

Crabill Watch: Her OKC Trutherism makes The Washington Independent.

The Washington Independent:

The Virginia Republican Party has a lot on its shoulders this year — a failure to take back the governor’s mansion will slow the GOP momentum going in to the 2010 elections. Nevertheless, the party hasn’t been tacking to the center as it builds itself back up again. (It moved far right in 2008, changing candidate nomination rules to clear a path for U.S. Senate candidate Jim Gilmore, who got shellacked by Mark Warner.)

Activist Catherine T. Crabill just won the party’s nomination for a seat in the state House of Delegates, despite having written that “our government was culpable in the [Oklahoma City] bombing” and referring more generally to “the domestic terrorists known as our own government.”

H/t: Fred2Blue

Catherine Crabill (Republican candidate in the 99th): Bush lied, Iraqis died; McCain a “smirking, angry, bully”; Ron Paul “a seriously credentialed constitutional scholar”.

From a letter to the editor that appeared in the Rappahannock Record in their April 3, 2008 edition:

These last five years the American public and the poor Iraqis have anguished over this horrific war made worse by the fact that the decision to engage this battle was based on lies by the Bush administration.

[…]

Then there’s John McCain, the smirking, angry, bully that has ridden his P.O.W. fame all the way to this year’s Republican Party nomination.

[…]

Meanwhile, the likes of Ron Paul, a seriously credentialed constitutional scholar with the track record, intellect, and character to match, is minimized and ignored to the dust bin of history.

H/t: James Cupp in the comments section of a previous post.

ROFLMAO: Catherine Crabill’s OKC Trutherism makes The Free Lance–Star.

First time I’ve liked something that Frank Delano has written:

Crabill also told the convention that she had been “beaten, humiliated and ridiculed” by bloggers who discovered a 1995 newspaper article in which she blamed the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing on the federal government. At the time, Crabill lived in New Mexico.

The Washington Times quoted her as saying:

“‘If any militia group is truly responsible for the murderous bombing in Oklahoma City, then I say, ‘Hangin’s too good for ’em,'” said Catherine Crabill of Aragon, N.M., who belongs to a group called New Mexico Citizens Action Association.

“But Mrs. Crabill said it’s her belief ‘this heinous act of violence was the work of our government,’ which will ‘use it as an excuse to aggressively attack the growing militia movement across the country.'”

Crabill denied making the 1995 statement, but, in a recent posting on her Web site, catherinecrabill.com, she said: “I did and do believe that our government was culpable in the [Oklahoma City] bombing. I am not ashamed of standing with my friends and neighbors in New Mexico from the domestic terrorists known as our own government.”

How long until all these delegates that voted for her start screaming they knew nothing like typical political cowards?

For the record, I did not “beat” anyone. “[H]umiliated and ridiculed”? Sure, that was me.

Live-twittering the Republican mass meeting for the 99th House of Delegates District.

Follow it on Twitter starting around 10:30 a.m. The meeting is at the A.T. Johnson Human Services Building in Montross for those that are curious.

Hopefully no one there throws a punch (or takes a shot) at me.

UPDATE: For those that weren’t following my updates on Twitter, Catherine Crabill secured the Republican nomination today. I’ll be writing up a post with some thoughts later.