The Diddly Awards

The Forked-Tongue award for political doublespeak

Illustration: Peter Hoey

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Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), for an email to his Team American PAC in which he insisted that the reason we needed to secure our nation’s border was the “struggle to preserve our national identity.”

Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), for having his spokesman issue an ex-planation for a curiosity on his financial disclosure forms, which showed that the representative had reported a $30,000 debt but then experienced a conspicuous streak of luck during a fleeting visit to a private high-stakes casino. The congressman, according to his flack, placed two bets, the first at $100, and won $34,000 in a three-card “game of chance.”

Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), for taking issue with Katrina survivors at a congressional hearing when they compared their temporary housing to concentration camps. “Not a single person was marched into a gas chamber and killed,” Miller explained.

Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), for eliminating the $1.3 million funding (and all future funding) for the Fish Passage Center, which carried out a simple count of endangered salmon on the Columbia and Snake rivers, calculating the fish’s decline. Craig—who, during his last campaign, received more money from energy groups than from any other industry and was honored by the National Hydropower Association as “Legislator of the Year”—accused fisheries scientists of “advocacy,” arguing that “false science leads people to false choices.”

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), for claiming that he’d never met Jack Abramoff when it became public that political fixer Ralph Reed had assured Abramoff in an email, “We have also choreographed Cornyn’s response.”

WINNER! Bob Ney, who allegedly helped Abramoff’s casino clients, has refused to elaborate on his casino visit because of the “national security implications.”

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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