To his credit, this was a decent move.  Chambliss is still a homophobe, but at least he seems stung by the fact that this happened, and that it came out of his office.

Joe doesn’t have an exact transcript, but relays the basic gist of what was said over at his place.

In case you missed this story somehow, a staffer in Saxby Chambliss’s Atlanta office left a comment on JoeMyGod which said, “All faggots must die.”  It made the national news.  Somebody is probably going to lose his/her job.

Cutting out a bit early today, so here’s your Weekly Round-up and your Late Friday Random Ten.

Let us remember the week that was, together:  First off, Wayne was on Rachel Maddow last Friday night!  It went great.  On a smaller scale, I was randomly on David Pakman’s Midweek Politics with David Pakman, and it also went great.  I sounded gay.

Speaking of gays [imagine that], gays can kiss longer than straight people, so nyah.  Good thing, because two polls now show that marriage equality has majority support, so there’s a lot of kissyface in our future.  The Religious Right are victims now, in Canada and Indianapolis, where they were asked to make gay cupcakes.  I discussed the need for minorities to stand up for each other, specifically as regards moderate and liberal Muslims vis a vis the gay community.  Oh, and I went off on Chris Barron of GOProud, which led to a Twitter Fight, which led to a nice discussion about BBQ.  He’s a fun sparring partner, I’ll give him that.

Bishop Eddie Long:  gay sex scandal.  John Boehner:  maybe straight sex scandal.  Who knows?  It would be nice if he or the alleged mistress would answer “yes” or “no.”

DADTFail 2010:  Lady Gaga tried to help, Peter Sprigg grunted and moaned about it a lot, then Thers and I laughed at him.  Bryan Fischer also grunted and moaned.  Laughed at him, too.  Susan Collins sucked, as did almost everybody else in the Senate, and in the end it was a big serving of fail all around.  After the vote, John McCain lost his marbles, thanks to a good serving of the old “Eleveld,” which is the new word for “journalist.”  Wayne recapped it here, and we looked at Leonard Matlovich’s tombstone, poignant as it is.

Then a crazy guy in Saxby Chambliss’s office decided to leave threatening anti-gay comments on JoeMyGod, so that was embarrassing for big old homophobe Saxby.  Speaking of homophobes, HomoCon is tomorrow!  YAY!  Okay, that’s all.

Music this week is from that old gay classic musical RENT.  I happened to be listening to the Original Cast recording last night, and I really don’t have to set it up for you, because you’re all gay and stuff, so you can probably sing the entire show all the way through in your sleep, and some of you probably know the blocking.  Anyway, one of my very favorite moments in all of musical theater is after the first “La Vie Boheme“, when Mimi and Roger sing “I Should Tell You” to each other. [Insert flutter, sigh and single tear here.]   So we’ll start with that, hit shuffle on the old iTunes machine and, oh look, it’s like, my favorite Tori Amos song ever, and also some other stuff.  More videos after le jump.

1.  Jay Brannan – “Bowlegged and Starving”
2. Tokyo Police Club – “Tessellate” [Remix by Tom Campesinos!]
3. Banjo or Freakout – “Joy to the World”
4. 10,000 Maniacs – “Gold Rush Brides”
5. Tori Amos – “Lust”
6. Fever Ray – “If I Had A Heart”
7. Lightning Dust – “Never Seen”
8. U2 – “Numb”
9. David Mead – “Girl on the Roof”
10. Port O’Brien – “In the Meantime”

(Read More)

And Keith Olbermann is reporting on it, as well as John McCain’s widdle senile temper tantrum after the DADT vote:

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ office has determined it was indeed the source of a highly publicized homosexual-bashing slur on an Internet site. But in a statement, Chambliss’ office said it has not discovered exactly who was behind the slur, and has turned the matter over to the Senate Sergeant At Arms. “The (Sergeant at Arms) has worked side by side with our personnel to determine whether the comment in question emanated from our office. That appears to be the case,” an unsigned statement from Chambliss’ press office read. “There has not been a determination as to who posted the comment,” the statement read. “That part of the review is ongoing, and is now in the hands of the Senate Sergeant at Arms.” Spokeswomen for Chambliss did not return a reporters phone calls or emails seeking more details.

Joe Jervis also mentions that he has been interviewed by The New York Times on the story.

The money quote from the above video, though, comes from Dan Savage, on the subject of John McCain’s outburst:   “Props to Kerry Eleveld for committing an act of journalism in the presence of a US Senator.”

Props, indeed.

Saxby Chambliss’s office has admitted it. Here’s Joe Jervis with the latest from this crazy story that started this afternoon:

I’ve just gotten off the phone with Atlanta Journal-Constitution political writer Jim Gallaway who says that Sen. Saxby Chambliss has confirmed that the “All faggots must die” comment left here on JMG earlier today did indeed come from his Atlanta office. Galloway reports that Chambliss told him his office is now conducting an internal investigation.

This statement was issued by Chambliss’s spokesperson:

“We have seen the allegations and are moving quickly to understand the facts. This office has not and will not tolerate any activity of the sort alleged,” Chambliss spokeswoman Bronwyn Lance Chester said. “Once we have ascertained whether these claims are true, we will take the appropriate steps.” The comment was posted on Joe.My.God., a blog dedicated to gay and lesbian issues. “All [gays] must die,” wrote a commenter identifying himself as “Jimmy.” Blog author Joseph Jervis of New York City used the Internet Protocol address attached to the comment to trace the slur to “the neighborhood” of Chambliss’ office in Atlanta. Readers quickly helped. “Among the fields in which gay people are over-represented is the IT field,” Jervis said. The office of U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson is in the same area. But a spokeswoman for Isakson said his staff quickly ascertained that the message did not originate with them.

Crazy, crazy.

Also: the person who did it will probably be identified by tomorrow, but let’s just go on record right now saying that whoever the person was who did it is not only a bigot, but also mindnumbingly stupid. From a Senate computer?! Really?! My god.

Nothing is confirmed yet, but we’ll stay on this.  If any of you out there are “internutz smart,” go help out in Joe’s comments section:

The above comment was left today by “Jimmy” on my post about the DADT cloture vote. The IP address *appears* to resolve to the neighborhood of GOP U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ Atlanta office. The ISP is “United States Senate.” I’m confident that the JMG internet sleuths can get to the source.

Here’s the IP: 156.33.20.72. Get busy, geeks!

If so, wow.

UPDATE: Not Chambliss’s office.  Johnny Isakson’s office.  The OTHER Republican Senator from Georgia:

According to a friend of JMG reader Sean Chapin, the comment appears to have actually come from the Atlanta office of Sen. Johnny Isakson, the OTHER Republican Senator in Georgia, whose offices are not far from Sen. Chambliss’. Dennis writes:

“First I did a WHOIS lookup on the address and found out that it belonged to the US Senate. Then I did a trace on the IP and got the latitude, longitude and city location for the IP. Once I had the city, I did a search on senate offices and started with the one that came out on top which was Isakson’s. Once I had the address of his office, I pulled up the latitude and longitude info for it and found that it matched those of the IP.”

Joe’s got a bunch of screenshots, etc. Go see for yourself.

In mid-November, the Colorado Springs-based media empire and political organization laid off 202 of its employees — about 20 percent of its workforce. The group’s explanation for the mass layoffs is the nation’s economic crisis. However, Focus’ money woes may stem, in part, from the more than half a million dollars it spent this fall to help defeat Proposition 8, the recently passed legislation that took civil-marriage rights away from GLBT Californians.

Today, we get new information: While Focus employees were getting the workplace equivalent to lumps of coal, Focus was busy spending more money: The Colorado Independent reports that the organization spent $35,310 to produce radio ads promoting Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ successful runoff re-election campaign this week. The commercials — which had to have been purchased after the Nov. 4 election that made the runoff vote necessary — reportedly were in production around the same time Focus workers were getting the bad news.

What does this move say about Focus on the Family’s priorities? In this season of love and goodwill, when much of the world’s focus will be on the Holy Family, the organization has opted to throw its money into a political move to destroy families. At the same time, Focus tells more than 200 of its workers and their families that for them, there is no more room at the inn.

Bah humbug, indeed. What would Jesus say?