Word: allen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...thought the Virginia Senate race couldn't possibly get any weirder, you were wrong. A University of Virginia law student and liberal blogger named Mike Stark showed up Tuesday at a Charlottesville event for George Allen, the Republican incumbent in a tight race for reelection, and started shouting questions about whether Allen spit on his first wife, a charge that has appeared on Internet blogs but is totally unproven. Allen campaign officials grabbed the man, knocked him to the ground and dragged him out of the event, leading Stark - who aides to Democratic challenger Jim Webb say has no affiliation...
...Allen "could have ignored my questions," he wrote in the e-mail. "Instead he and his thugs chose violence." Allen's spokesman, Dan Allen (no relation) said Stark pushed him, inciting the incident, and noted that Stark is a liberal blogger who had shouted questions at a previous event for Senator Allen...
...altercation was only the latest dustup in what has become both the ugliest, and perhaps most critical, Senate contest in the country. This race was supposed to be a debate about one of the defining issues of the campaign, Iraq - between Allen, a strong defender of the war and once potential 2008 G.O.P. presidential nominee, and Webb, the former Navy secretary who became a Democrat in part because of his objections to the war. The race, which is now effectively tied after Allen had been leading slightly, could determine which party controls the Senate next year...
...Instead, it's been about Allen's use of the derogatory term "macaca" to describe a South Asian Webb supporter who attended an Allen campaign event; his alleged use of racial slurs in the 1970s; the Jewish roots of his mother; and "a horny woman's dream," the term Webb used to describe the dorms at the U.S Naval Academy in a 1979 article arguing against allowing women into combat. And lately it has degenerated further, if that's possible, into nasty charges about passionate prose and alleged arrests. Last week Republicans started attacking the war novels Webb has written...
...only get duller from here. After all the dirt that has been thrown around, both candidates are trying to get voters to focus on the positive parts of their biographies. Allen started running an ad talking about his service as both governor and senator in the state and his support for lower taxes, while new Webb spots talk about his war service and his support of increased funding for health care. One of the Democratic Party's brightest stars, Barack Obama, is campaigning for Webb this week; so is actor Michael J. Fox, who is supporting Democratic candidates...