Hard-left Daily Beast writer Michael Tomasky has a nasty habit of smearing conservatives every chance he gets, and it seems he has found his newest target, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.). Writing in a May 1 piece for the online publication Tomasky used the FBI investigation over gifts McDonnell received for his daughter’s wedding to slam the Virginia governor's Christian faith.
Tomasky started off his rant by throwing harsh language at the governor, calling his actions, “sleazy and cowardly.” At issue is the controversial relationship McDonnell has with businessman Jonnie Williams and whether or not the governor accepted money for political benefits aimed at Williams’ company, Star Scientific Inc.
According to McDonnell, he received a $15,000 gift from Williams, and because he used that money as a gift for his daughter’s wedding, Virginia law does not require disclosure of such donations. McDonnell defended his actions by noting:
I signed the initial contract, we put down some initial deposits, but my daughter and her husband wanted to pay for the wedding, in fact...they paid a significant amount, in fact, almost all the other expenses and they wanted to do this. Now they accepted the gift from Mr. Williams. And I believe under the reporting laws that this would be a gift to my daughter and not to me
Playing judge and jury, Tomasky insisted that McDonnell accepted "a bribe, pure and simple," adding:
It may not be legally or technically, but morally, he accepted a bribe. And now he's shoving it off on his daughter? I wonder if he had the decency to tell her before he decided to throw her under the bus in public. Unbelievable.
But wait, as they say on late-night informercials, there's more. Tomasky decided to thump his bully pulpit by condemning Tomasky as a vile sinner who has betrayed his religious convictions:
Why do these people always think they're not going to get caught? And what power on earth could make him think that accepting this $15,000 was okay? It's mind boggling. And doesn't this man purport to be a good Christian?
Tomasky’s disgusting anti-Christian rant continued:
Virginia governors are limited to one term. McDonnell supposedly fancies himself a presidential candidate and sees his path to the GOP nomination as through the Christian right (he studied at Pat Robertson's Regent University), which is why he proposes all those laws policing vaginas. Those are bad enough, at least to some of us. But this. This is like some corrupt Bronx pol in the 1950s. And it will stick.
Tomasky’s attack on McDonnell is not only disgusting but factually incorrect. McDonnell never proposed “laws policing vaginas”, and actually opposed a bill proposed by the Virginia state legislature requiring all women seeking an abortion to have an invasive transvaginal ultrasound. McDonnell’s opposition to the procedure caused the legislature to remove such a provision, requiring non-invasive abdominal ultrasounds prior to abortions, but such facts seem foreign to Mr. Tomasky.
By the way, Planned Parenthood clinics in Virginia, as former NewsBusters contributor Alana Goodman noted, already require ultrasounds to help the abortionist accurately gauge how far along a woman is in her pregnancy.
Tomasky’s fascination with McDonnell’s Christian faith is not merely odd, it is extremely disrespectful and unlikely to have been used against liberal Democrats. For example, it's hard to imagine Tomasky tagging former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) as a“sleazy” Jew as the disgraced seeks redemption by securing the Democratic Party nomination for New York City mayor.
Since Tomasky is a devout, catechized liberal, we can assume that he would never go after the religious faith of a fellow traveler, but McDonnell is fair game. In the words of Tomasky, one more sleazy journalist.
