June 11, 2012

Rove Super-PAC: Smear First, Get Answers Later

US Secretary of Commerce John Bryson. Official portrait

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Secretary of Commerce John Bryson was involved in a series of car accidents in California on Saturday, and allegedly left the scene of one of them, Reuters and other news wires report. It’s not publicly known what caused these incidents, but police have said that so far “there is no indication that alcohol or drugs played a role in the collisions.” That didn’t stop American Crossroads, the GOP super-PAC advised by Karl Rove, from recklessly speculating. Progressive Media’s Josh Dorner grabbed a screenshot of a tweet from the group (it has since been deleted):

Bryson’s spokeswoman says he had a seizure, and Bryson has been released from a hospital after spending the night there. Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American Crossroads, has since apologized for the tweet, saying the hashtag he used “attempted levity” but “communicated poorly.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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