I'll say it up front, I've always been bullish on Al Franken, even when others here were ripping on him, and already giving up on the race, and lamenting how the race would've been better with Ciresi or Nelson-Pallmeyer. And one of the arguments used against Franken was that he had pissed off some other prominent Minnesota Democrats like Congresspeople Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison and Amy Klobuchar. There was quite a bit of hand-wringing going on.
Well, take a look below the fold to see what's happened in the last couple days. (And from the links, yes, I got this stuff from MN Publius.
OK, finally got around to uploading my photos from Netroots Nation. So here goes. I missed the first Yearly Kos in Vegas, following the action from home in Los Angeles. Chicago was the first one I attended, and I had a blast, though being in a hotel 2 miles away from the convention center wasn't that great. Ah, taxi fare. This year, being right in the middle of the action at the Austin Hilton was awesome.
It was great to see people I hadn't seen since Chicago, hang out with the Los Angeles crowd, party late into the night, and somehow wake up for an 8:30am meeting with the Speaker.
And yes, I'm still pushing for Netroots Nation 2010 to be held in Los Angeles. Here's the tagline: "Embrace Your Inner Hollywood Liberal". :-) We'll even have a big governor's race and Senate race (should Arnold challenge Barbara Boxer as many think he will) here, so California will actually matter.
So with about three months to go, with Ted Stevens' indictment dominating the Senate news, it's time for another look at all the 2008 Senate races. There are 35 seats up for election because of a scenario in Wyoming and Mississippi where both seats are up, due to the passing of Craig Thomas and the resignation of Trent Lott, respectively. Now obviously, quite a few of the races are considered "safe" for the incumbent. So what are the competitive races?
I'll rank these in terms of tiers. The top tier will be the races where the party holding the seat has a real shot of switching (but I ain't guaranteeing anything). The second tier are races that could become top tier races, but are not at this point. Tier III are ones where a major event would need to happen for the seat to come into play. And the safe seats? Well, Mike Gravel has a better shot at winning the presidency than those incumbents have of losing their races.
This is meant to be a primer for both newcomers and political junkies alike, so some of the information may seem repetitive for you junkies out there. Also see my previous May diary to see what things have changed since my last update.
Sean Tevis is running for state representative in Kansas, and he's used an incredibly funny homage to webcomic xkcd to get his name out online. And boy, has it worked!
Update: Tevis has removed the images from flickr. Since I don't know why, I'll only hyperlink the comics.
The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.S. prohibitions against torture unless they "have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," according to a previously secret Justice Department memo released Thursday.
The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds.
"Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture," Jay Bybee, then the assistant attorney general, wrote in the memo.
So there you have it. If the interrogator didn't mean to torture the suspect, it wasn't torture! Brilliant logic from the Bush administration yet again!
Well, this is a little surprising, I have to admit. The latest Rasmussen poll shows Obama's lead over McCain in his home state is only 50%-37%. Now sure, that's still a double-digit lead. And I doubt anyone thinks Obama won't easily win Illinois.
But I had thought he'd at least get above 50% in his home state. I mean, running against Alan Keyes, Obama got 70% of the vote in Illinois for Senate! (Granted, with leaners included, Obama leads McCain 52%-41%.)
FWIW, this is a state where John Kerry got 54.82% of the vote in 2004, and Gore got 54.60% in 2000.
Given what happened yesterday, I feel it's important I repost my earlier diary on who are the GOOD Democratic challengers when it comes to FISA. I'll try to corral all their statements into this diary, so you can see who the "good guys" are.
First, let's start off with the current House and Senate members who voted against this bill. (For the Senate, I'm only including those who voted against cloture yesterday for the bill.) They do deserve credit, as it's their jobs on the line.
Follow me below the fold to see the dozens of Democratic challengers who are standing up for the Constitution, and are against this FISA bill and retroactive immunity.
Not good. The only Democrat in the this race, emergency room doctor Keith Hummel, has suspended his campaign. His website now has his message on the front page. His statement and more below the fold.
Tune into MSNBC's Verdict with Dan Abrams right now to see Gen. Wesley Clark responding to the controversy over his comments. For those who missed it, there will be a replay at 1am PST/4am EST.
See other diaries about Clark's comments and our defense of him here, here and here.
Updates:
Gen. Clark is still focusing correctly on the actual qualifications to be President.
Yes!! Clark highlights that one of McCain's spokepeople out today hitting at Obama and Clark was one of the infamous Kerry Swiftboaters!
Clark does say anyone that serves during wartime should be honored for his "character and courage". Then he says people look for "character and courage" in their President. But he says that doesn't have to come from the military service, and says Obama has his own kind of "character and courage".
In the last couple days, there have been several posts across the blogosphere citing what various candidates running for Congress have said on FISA and retroactive immunity for the telecoms. But so far, it's been all over the map. I'll try to corral all their statements into this diary, so you can see who the "good guys" are.
First, let's start off with the current House and Senate members who voted against this bill. They do deserve credit, as it's their jobs on the line.
Follow me below the fold to see the dozens of Democratic challengers who are standing up for the Constitution, and are against this FISA bill and retroactive immunity.
This diary won't be popular, but it needs to be said. This past weekend, UCLA finally finished up the school year. Bill Clinton was supposed to have come spoken at Commencement for the College of Letters and Science. However, because of a labor dispute between the UC and AFSCME, Clinton ended up not speaking. Now, the replacement was Ariana Huffington. But she too backed out at the last minute because of the labor dispute.
Note: There was NOT a strike going on. It hadn't gotten to that stage. They're still in negotiations for a new contract. But the union requested that speakers cancel their commencement speeches.
Read below the fold to see how things went downhill.
Did hell just freeze over? I'm watching former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) speaking on MSNBC right now with Andrea Mitchell, and the first thing that came out of his mouth on energy independence sounded like one of us talking!!
He didn't say the words "Apollo-style program", but he did say we needed to invest in all types of renewable energies, including nuclear (which is something we do need to do, folks, like it or not). He admitted that Congress had only been "nibbling" around the edges in combating our addiction to oil, and that we needed to go big to really become more energy independent.
And then, you had former Sen. John Breaux (D-LA) diss Obama's idea for a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. Of course, given that it's Louisiana, I'm not sure you could find a current or former statewide elected official in that state come out in favor of a windfall profits tax on Big Oil.
Oh, then the discussion turned to evangelicals, and Lott reverted back to what we're accustomed to.
But in a turn of events even us bloggers weren't expecting, Kossack Marta Jorgensen (pcmedia) won her 3-way primary race in CA-24! (She had originally announced her campaign on DailyKos back in March.)
So with less than half a year to go, it’s time for another look at all the 2008 Senate races. There are 35 seats up for election because of a scenario in Wyoming and Mississippi where both seats are up, due to the passing of Craig Thomas and the resignation of Trent Lott, respectively. Now obviously, quite a few of the races are considered "safe" for the incumbent. So I’ll rank these in terms of tiers. The top tier will be the races where the party holding the seat has a real shot of switching. The second tier are races that could become top tier races, but are not at this point. Tier III are ones where a major event would need to happen for the seat to come into play. And the safe seats? Well, Mike Gravel has a better shot at winning the presidency than those incumbents have of losing their races.
Follow me below the fold for all the races. This is meant to be a primer for both newcomers and political junkies alike, so some of the information may seem repetitive for you junkies out there. Also see my previous March diary to see what things have changed since my last update.
There's been several diaries today on the latest SurveyUSA poll of Ohio showing Obama beating McCain by 9 points, 48%-39%. I caution you guys from getting too excited, to first take a look at the cross-tabs in the poll.
It assumes 52% of the voters will be Democrats, only 28% will be Republicans, and only 18% will be Independents.
Is this realistic?
The 2004 Ohio exit poll shows that the electorate was 40% Republican, only 35% Democratic, and 25% Independent. This is a far cry from the 52% Democrats this month's poll shows.
Update: Some people asked about the 2006 numbers, given how much Ohio changed that year. Well, from the 2006 exit poll, the electorate that wiped out Blackwell and DeWine was only 40% Democrat, 37% Republican, and 23% Independent. That's an 8-point swing in our favor from 2004, but still nowhere near 52% Democratic turnout.
With McCain's "100 years" comment, I figured someone had to parody Five for Fighting's "100 Years" to talk about McCain and Iraq. And when nobody stepped up to the plate, I figured I'd have to do it then.
But unlike most parodies, it's not funny, but rather sobering, when you really start thinking about what 100 years of our military presence would actually start to look like. Here's a music video of the song, if you're not familiar with it.
Update: MSNBC just reported 7,000 dead, though online reports haven't updated the figures yet.
As if the Myanmar cyclone wasn't bad enough, a 7.8 earthquake struck the Sichuan province Monday afternoon at 2:28pm, and early reports say there's between 3,000-5,000 dead from just that one province. I know we're all concerned about the primary battle and all, but there's real tragedy going on elsewhere in the world too.
This tells you how massive the quake was.
The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.
There's reports of as many as 900 students trapped after their school collapsed.
Xinhua reporters in Juyuan township, about 60 miles from the epicenter, saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of their three-story school building "while others were crying out for help."
Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."
Wow, this happened in February, and yet did anybody hear about this? Whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson's home caught fire, and then a few days later, her car was run off the road by a former police officer! This is all in addition to Don Siegelman's home being broken into twice, as was his lawyer's office.
