[UPDATED] Seems Vito Fossella is smarter than the Staten Island GOP. Vito Fossella has declined to run. I guess he wants to spend more time with his families.

Michael Bouldin already covered this, but the Brooklyn Papers hit the Staten Island Republicans pretty hard for it and it is worth quoting them. I should note that I have been suspicious and critical of the Brooklyn Papers since their take over by Rupert Murdoch, but this article shows they haven't completely lost their independence to Murdoch. From the Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 edition of the Brooklyn Paper:

GRAND OLD PARTY PANEL PICKS DRUNK-DRIVING, CHEATING, LOVE-CHILD-FATHERING FOSSELLA TO WIN HIS OLD SEAT BACK

The already divisive Republican effort to unseat freshman Rep. Mike McMahon took a bizarre turn last week, when a GOP committee on Staten Island nominated none other than Vito Fossella — the congressman who was run out of town after a drunk-driving arrest and subsequent revelations that he had a secret family in Virginia — to represent the party in the fall election

Thanks to Albany Project, here's Vito Fosslla's mug shot from his arrest:

I think this is typical of the blatant hypocrisy of the Republican Party. The same fools who wanted to impeach Bill Clinton for a fling continue to embrace Vito "Twice the Family Values" Fossella despite his actual virtual bigamy. Now I am no fan of Mike McMahon, but the Republicans are absolute sleazy hypocrites for picking Vito Fossella's sorry ass to run against McMahon.

I should note that there are two other Republicans running. The one candidate from Brooklyn, Michael Allegretti (owner of Bayside Fuel Oil, one of the many companies the EPA is considering responsible for Gowanus canal pollution), has the support of the Kings County Republican Party (no surprise) while Michael Grimm (like Drunken Luv Muffin Vito Fossella from Staten Island) has the support of the none too impressive Kings County Conservative Party.

Given the competition the Republicans are fielding, sad to say the rather unimpressive Mike McMahon is looking pretty good by comparison.

I am deeply troubled by the blatant hypocrisy of the Republican Party. Shortly after Sarah Palin was selected as the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate, it turns out that her 17-year old daughter is pregnant out of wedlock. As soon as Palin announces that her daughter will be keeping the child and marrying the father (clearly a shot-gun wedding), Palin is held up as a prime example of “family values” in action.

Ironically, none of the Republicans appear to notice that Palin’s staunch stance against sex education doesn’t appear to have kept her own daughter from engaging in premarital sex.

I am sure that the same glowing accolades would not be accorded the Obama family if they had a teenage daughter who became pregnant out of wedlock. The Republicans would denounce the family, accusing them of loose morals and bad parenting. And, they would probably attribute the girl’s premarital sexual activity to exposure to sex education in school. No doubt there would also be rumblings about how promiscuous African American teenagers are.  read more »

Well, we already know that Rudy Giuliani screwed New York's firefighters and bears some responsibility for the deaths of so many brave firefighters on 9/11 and the poisoning of many others in the weeks afterwards.

We already know that Mitt Romney is a flip flopping opportunist who openly supports torture.

But both Rudy and Mitt are also chickenhawks in the shameful tradition of Bush, Cheney and the vast majority of hawkish Republicans. McCain, though his record on Veterans issues sucks, is certainly exempt from the "chickenhawk" accusation. But Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are cowards who evaded service every way they could, but demand that others serve...and are willing to insult real Veterans in the process.

Chickenhawk: A politician whose hawkishness and willingness to put soldiers' lives on the line is matched only by their desperation to avoid military service themselves.

This was covered in Salon.com last week, but only now getting around to covering it.

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