In Rhode Island. Eric Moscowitz makes some interesting points about the implications of Chafee’s victory on John Bolton’s nomination. I was a little surprised that the NYU paper loves Bolton so much.
In Maryland. I didn’t even know, or care, that Ben Cardin is Jewish. Too bad others seem to care so much. Hunter shows how focusing on the religious faith of a politican can get really ugly.
A slew of Jewish candidates got a pre-Rosh Hashanah blessing Tuesday in primaries across the United States.
Two Jews won their bids to become the Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate — Ben Cardin in Maryland and Bernie Sanders in Vermont.
In other statewide races, Democrats Eliot Spitzer won his primary for governor in New York and Douglas Gansler won for attorney general in Maryland.
Jewish contenders also won a number of nominations for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives: Two Democratic nominations in Arizona, one Democratic nomination each in New Hampshire and Wisconsin and a Republican nomination in Minnesota. A man who is raising his children Jewish won a Democratic primary for a House seat in Maryland.
The abundance of Jewish Democrats now facing virtually guaranteed wins or viable races in November will be welcomed by party leaders facing flak for abandoning Sen. Joe Lieberman last month in Connecticut.
In Connecticut.
In a 20-minute speech at the Yale Law School, Lamont asserted that the Bush administration, with the support of Lieberman, has bumbled and blustered the U.S. into Iraq, alienating allies and the Arab world – and diverting resources from the war on terror, whether at home or in pursuit of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
“Today, America is weaker, not stronger. We have sacrificed our daughters and sons and our treasure in a war we didn’t have to fight,” Lamont said. “We have ignored the real threats and security needs in the war we should be fighting, the one against the terrorists.”
In New Jersey. The American Prospect talks about Hudson County politics and their effect on Menendez’s chances.
He had the misfortune of growing up and becoming
involved in politics in New Jersey’s infamous Hudson County. This is
where machine politics was invented, when Frank Hague,
mayor of Jersey City from 1917 to 1947, ruled his political empire with
a club in one hand and cold, hard cash in the other. While most
politicians dispute that anything close to a machine exists today, the
list of Hudson County politicians who have been indicted for corruption
charges is long.
More than twenty Hudson County politicians have either pled guilty or
been convicted of politically related charges since 2002.Menendez knew he’d have to deal with this heritage. He’d come of age under the political tutelage of William Musto,
local mayor and state legislator. The younger man made a hero of the
charismatic Musto, and was personally hurt when faced with the decision
that defined his political career — to testify against his mentor in a
federal corruption probe or to become Musto’s complicit ally in a
school board financial scandal. Menendez ultimately gave the testimony
that was the linchpin in Musto’s conviction. It was a decision that
could have cost him dearly; after receiving many late night phone
calls, the young Menendez chose to wear a bullet-proof vest and take
the threats against his life seriously.
In Montana. Conrad Burns is running dishonest commercials. Big surprise.
In Virginia. Is this a swift-boat campaign, or is this what you get when you recruit Republicans to run as Democrats?
A group of retired female military officers said Wednesday that being among the first women to attend the U.S. Naval Academy was hard enough in the late 1970s and Jim Webb made it far worse.
They said Webb deepened sexual harassment at the academy by authoring a 1979 article in Washington magazine, titled “Women Can’t Fight,” that scorned women’s presence at the college, saying they were unfit to lead male troops and eroding discipline with promiscuity.
In Ohio. The Boston Globe notices that grassroots activists don’t like the parties dictating who will win our primaries.
In Tennessee. Harold Ford, Jr. continues to emulate a Republican. Republicans don’t like it. Go figure.
Remember all the talk from the Democrats about not mixing religion and politics? Well, it is just talk. When it comes to blatantly mixing religion and politics for advancing themselves in campaigns, the Democrats are not at all shy about wearing religion on their sleeves. But will the media notice?
A case in point is Harold Ford, Jr. who recently filmed a campaign commercial for the U.S. Senate from Tennessee attacking his opponent, Bob Corker, from the interior of a church. As you can see in this video, Ford is not the least bit shy about using a church as a campaign ornament. Of course, if a Republican had tried to pull the same stunt the MSM would be shouting in outrage over this cynical mixture of religion and politics.
In Nevada. Bowers rates Nevada as our ninth most likely pick-up.
9. Nevada. (Democrat: Jack Carter).
Defying odds, this campaign continues to stay on the board. Rasmussen
has movement-candidate Jack Carter within only 7 points of Ensign, and
even Mason-Dixon, which still shows Ensign up comfortably, has the race
much closer than it was before. I am keeping my eye on this one, as I
still believe it has the potential to move up. Carter was recently
hospitalized, so my best thoughts go out to him.
Money race as of 7/26: Ensign $3.2M, Carter $0.4M
Latest polls: Mason-Dixon, August 8, Ensign 54%, Carter 33%; Rasmussen (R), July 31, Ensign 46%, Carter 39%
In Arizona. Jon Kyl is still pro-torture and pro-illegal domestic surveillance.
The Judiciary Committee’s eavesdropping vote was a rare rebuke for an administration that has tested the limits of executive power since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The panel’s eight Democrats were joined by two Republicans — Graham and the committee’s chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — in approving the Feinstein measure.
Specter has been the driving force behind the White House surveillance bill, which he brokered with Vice President Dick Cheney over the summer. But he said he voted for both bills — he had previously been a sponsor of the Feinstein legislation — because each had important attributes.
Some members of the panel, however, said the committee was passing the buck by sending multiple and conflicting legislation to the floor for a vote. A central premise of the Feinstein legislation was “totally contradictory to legislation we just passed,” said Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona. “What kind of message does that send to our colleagues?”
In Washington.
Republican Senate candidate Mike McGavick is proposing mandatory substance-abuse screening for welfare recipients who have children.
In a speech to the Pasco-Kennewick Rotary, McGavick proposed a “three-strike” requirement that could lead to mandatory drug testing and treatment, reduction of direct cash benefits and, in some cases, loss of parental rights.
He says testing and requiring treatment for adults in welfare households would benefit the children in those homes.
In Minnesota.
All three major parties contested in the race to fill the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., who is not seeking a second term.
The DFLers chose between two candidates in the race for the party’s slot in the U.S. Senate race in the general election. They are Amy Klobuchar and Darryl Stanton. The winner at the primary was Klobuchar with 94 percent of the votes.
In Missouri. Jim Talent was against wiretapping before he was for it.
After the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, the Clinton White House asked for more power to combat terrorism. Part of it included giving Washington more wiretapping authority. But that part of the bill was removed by the House by an amendment. Talent, who was then a congressman, voted for that amendment, Mahoney reported.
Click here to find out more!“His new ads suggest he’s a supporter of giving the president that kind of authority, but his record on this vote indicates that’s not to be the fact,” said Paige Bellamy, a McCaskill spokesman.
At the time, Talent told a newspaper reporter, “We’ve got to look very carefully at any proposals to give more discretionary power to law enforcement agencies.”
In Pennsylvania. Casey better wake up.
WHATEVER else you want to say about him – and there are plenty of people ready with a few choice adjectives – U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum makes a damn good speech.
At a recent campaign stop in Lewisburg, the embattled incumbent sounded like a general from a 1950s war flick as he spoke about terrorism.
“This is an enemy more dangerous than any we have faced in the 20th century,” he said, standing in a park gazebo before a small crowd. “This is the fight of our time.”
One of them anyway. Santorum may be thinking the same thing about his own fight for survival – an uphill struggle to sell his controversial conservative record in a middle-of-the-road state where his opponent, moderate Democrat Bob Casey Jr., remains stubbornly ahead in the polls.
“[Santorum] is the incumbent in the deepest trouble in the entire country,” said Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political-science professor.
