Joe the Teabagger Campaign Death Spiral Watch - Day Four - Miller Campaign Digs into the Gutter - Updated X 2

Reaching desperately, grasping at any straw, or rolled up $50-dollar bill, the people pulling the strings behind the scenes in the Joe the Teabagger campaign found right-wing, Andrew Beitbart wannabee, Dan Riehl yesterday, to come up with a smear or new line or something on Sen. Lisa Murkowski:

Dan Riehl of Riehl World View has a bit of a bombshell to drop on the arrogant, self-reverential "Senator of the people," Alaska's Lisa Murkowski -- she of the second hand Senate seat bequeathed to her by her father who held that seat himself. Riehl says that it is a commonly known, not-so-secret secret in Alaska that Lisa Murkowski is and/or was a major drug addict even as she served as Alaska's Republican Senator.

Murkowski recently lost her primary, as we all know, and suddenly she is now Mz independent because obviously having her in the Senate is far, far more important than anything as silly as the will of the voters! Perhaps her drug use explains her completely incomprehensible decision to continue running despite being turned out by her own voters?

So what did Riehl find?

It was back during the primary that I first heard reports that Alaska's independent candidate for Senate, Lisa Murkowski, may have routinely ignored the state's drug laws by regularly abusing cocaine. Given a lack of solid sources and Lisa Murkowski's loss to Joe Miller, I moved on, though some reports suggested the abuse may have been habitual, even while her influential politician father, Frank Murkowski, positioned himself as something of a hardliner on drug enforcement.
After calling Murkowski's office and getting no reply, Riehl sent five questions via email that he wanted answered regarding this rumored drug use.

1) Has Senator Murkowski ever used cocaine recreationally prior to her holding elective office at the state, or federal level? Has she ever shared same in the past, without cost, with friends and or associates, including at a then downtown Anchorage restaurant owned by her husband?

2) It's also been alleged that this was something of an open secret within a relatively small circle of friends and associates in Alaska. If true, is that a correct characterization?

3) Has the Senator ever been confronted with said allegations? If so, how did she respond?

4) Has her husband, Verne Martell, ever been involved with a police matter in California? Did Lisa's father Frank ever use his influence to minimize said matter, if not in essence, make it go away? Has she ever been approached by CA or AK media in this regard?

5) Finally, as it will likely be briefly re-visited in a pending item, the Senator recently spoke well of PMBR, see link below, despite its having been hit with an 11.9 million dollar judgment for copyright violation. Would the campaign care to comment as to how her experience with PMBR relates to the copyright issue? Any comment as to any concerns that the acknowledged assistance from PMBR could be construed as her having gained insight to copyrighted questions for which (bar exam) testing candidates should not have had access?

Still no reply.

That's from a blog post by Warner Todd Huston. He's a very busy far-right polemicist for hire, who is sometimes an attack dog on conservatives who the corporate masters feel have gone astray, or are less controllable than an up-and-coming alternative. Like Joe Miller.

Huston is quoting Riehl, who himself is easier to peg than is Huston. Here's John Amato, on Riehl:

Ever since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, the conservative movement has been having seismic convulsions over it. The bile, rage and disgusting behavior have exponentially increased and is still ongoing as the media captures it for the nation to see.

Dan Riehl's latest post about Harry's Reid's family tragedy is yet another example of that lunacy, but just another version of the same song. This one is particularly nauseating.

As you may know, Senator Harry Reid's 69 year old wife and 48 year old daughter were involved in a bad car accident Friday. Normal, decent Americans would ignore what political party they were in and hope that their suffering is as short lived as possible. To Dan Riehl, that expression takes on a sick new meaning:

Isn't It Time To Euthanize Reid's Wife?

I'm not sure I quite understand this, given that cost is so important as a burden to taxpayers when it comes to health care. If Democrats want so badly to abort babies because of it, why are we bothering with someone who has a broken neck and back at 69? It sounds to me like she's pretty well used up and has probably been living off the taxpayers for plenty of years to begin with. Aren't we at least going to get a vote on it?

Sen. Reid's daughter Lana Reid Barringer, 48, who was driving the mini-van, and his wife, Landra G. Reid, 69, a passenger, were both injured. Landra suffered a broken back and a broken neck in the crash; Barringer suffered minor injuries, Sen. Reid's office said Thursday.

I realize her crook of a husband and his pals in Congress have excluded themselves from the mess they're going to compel everyone else to join, but we're still paying the bills, are we not? I don't see that she's worth it at this point, frankly. I can't recall her ever doing anything for me. Come on, Harry - do your civic duty. The nation's broke and counting on you guy. Pull the plug and get back to work. And don't bill us for a full day today, either. This is no time to be sloughing off. Air freight her home, you can bury her during recess on your own time and dime. Or are you going to bill us for that, too?

Reid has stayed at his wife’s bedside throughout the day Friday and returned to the Capitol in the late afternoon.

I guess it doesn't matter to Riehl that Reid is a Mormon and is strictly pro-life. But let's forget about Harry's religious beliefs. Riehl demonstrates the insanity that epitomizes the conservative movement.

And these are the people that the media demands the White House should try and reach out to and work with in a more bipartisan fashion. I guess Dan Riehl supports some form of those Palin death panels after all.

How can you work with crazy people?

Joe the Teabagger is avoiding the Alaska media, but he's continuing to reach out to right-wing nutcases from out of state. Yesterday, he was on the Mark Levin Show for several minutes. Levin has been and continues to be Christine O'Donnell's biggest supporter on the radio airwaves.

Here he is with Joe:

The setup is that Murkowski is taking out-of-state $$$, and Levin asserts that "this is serious," and that Miller is "a future national leader."

Murkowski may have once been a cokehead. But Miller is currently the biggest Kochhead in Alaska history. (I used the term Kochsucker for Miller a couple of weeks ago, but edited it out. This time it stays.)

Miller's real problem today is going to be the growing realization that he hacked co-workers computers to rig an election. Whether or not this was illegal, a misdemeanor or possibly a felony, I don't know.

What I do know is that the Alaska press corps, who Miller collectively told to "Go Fuck Off!!" Monday, are looking into this, and into other stuff. I doubt they'll be looking into Murkowski's alleged cocaine use any more deply than Dan Fagan, Rick Reidell or Eddie Burke looked into George W. Bush's.

Update: Andrew Halcro is reporting that yesterday John McCain cancelled a campaign appearance with Joe the Teabagger.

Yesterday, I wrote that this a week "that will end up leaving the Joe Miller U.S. Senate campaign a smoldering wreck, after it augurs into the ground by late Friday." If anyone knows when to bail out of a plane spinning out of control, it is John McCain.

Update - 3:15 p.m: Craig Medred has looked into Riehl's allegations and has posted an article on this at The Alaska Dispatch. Here's the nub of the part on Murkowski's accuser:

Steve Wackowski, Murkowski's communications director, said the campaign Wednesday night Tweeted the charges are not true, and on Thursday he reiterated that they are "absolutely untrue."

But the Riehl Report, which bills itself as "real politics in real time...written for average Americans." claims to have a source. "While several sources refused to go on record, even as regards the allegations, I continued to network and only recently found one who would do that, as well as claim a direct exchange over them with Lisa Murkowski herself, one in which she did not deny the allegations," the website posted this week.

That source, according to the website, is Richard (Rick) J. Helms, a former "crime prevention specialist" for the Anchorage Police Department, an opponent of Murkowski's when she ran for the state House in 1998, and now an attorney in Anchorage. The website says Helms in 1998 told Murkowski that he'd heard she used coke, but that he wouldn't make it a campaign issue. The website went on to quote Helms saying that Murkowski subsequently sent him "a handwritten note a couple of days later with some comments about the party, issues and mentioned that she would hold me to my word regarding me not mentioning the cocaine during our campaign."

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Helms said he didn't think he was quoted accurately. He said the note, which he doesn't have any more, promised to hold him to his word that he wouldn't bring up unsubstantiated accusations of cocaine use. Helms added that he has no idea as to the validity of those accusations.

"I don't have any direct knowledge," he said. "I thought there was something to it, but you never know in these political campaigns." Helms said he told people to report the accusations to police, though he himself never said anything to anyone at the police department even though he was working there as a contractor at the time. He felt no obligation, he said, to tip police to the possibility a state lawmaker was said to be a drug abuser.

"I'm not going to do it as a third party,'' he said. "It's incumbent on people who see it to report it."

Helms said he didn't remember any of the names of people who claimed to have knowledge of Murkowski doing coke. He also said he could provide no help in tracking the allegations back to possible sources. He said he didn't want to encourage "speculation'' on the allegations.

"I only commented on those things that occurred," he said. "There's nothing more I'm going to provide you."