Friday’s political round-up

April 13, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* After MoveOn.org’s online Town Hall Forum this week on the war in Iraq, the group asked members to participate in an online straw poll on which is the best Democratic presidential candidate “to lead the country out of Iraq.” According to the results, released yesterday, Barack Obama won the overall vote with 28%, followed closely by John Edwards with 25%. Among MoveOn members who attended House Parties, Edwards won with 25%, followed by Bill Richardson with 21%.

* There’s been considerable speculation of late about Sen. John Warner’s (R-Va.) possible retirement next year, and the rumors grew considerably louder yesterday when the senator reported a first-quarter fundraising total of $500. That’s not a typo. “It almost speaks for itself,” said one national Democratic official. “You have to try to raise only $500. You have to tell people not to give you money, and you have to return checks.”

* Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) is already the longest serving senator in American history, but that doesn’t mean he plans to retire anytime soon. “I am not getting ready for any re-election right now,” he said. “I will run in 2012, the Lord willing.” Byrd will turn 95 shortly after Election Day 2012.

* Former football player Lynn Swann may have turned out to be an awful gubernatorial candidate, losing badly to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) last year, but he isn’t necessarily done running for office. Swann told the AP that he has been approached about running for Congress from Pennsylvania’s 4th, where freshman Rep. Jason Altmire (D) recently defeated three-term Republican Melissa Hart.

* And the New York Daily News reports today on the still-enthusiastic Draft Condoleezza Rice movement. Think Condi ’08, which is already fund-raising and recruiting volunteers, is just the latest organization to try to persuade the unwilling Rice to run. “She’s certainly flattered by all this, but she’s said that after this she’s going to go back to Stanford University, where she is still a tenured professor,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

IMHO Byrd needs to help pick a successor and then help them get ready to be elected. I like the man, but he really doesn’t look like he’s trying to help the party when he talks about running for an office he would have to live to be 101 years old to fully serve.

  • Lawyers for the Denver Three argue that the President has the right to remove people who disagree with him.from his speeches.

    “The president’s right to control his own message includes the right to exclude people expressing discordant viewpoints from the audience,” states the brief.
    http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5481779,00.html

    The President’s “right to control his own message.” Just let that sink in for a moment. These people believe that the Constitution protects the government from citizen interference. They believe it protects the President from “discordant viewpoints.”

    We are facing the equivalent of a Presidential coup with these people, an overturning of the Constitution by Presidential decree. Let’s hope there are still enough honest judges out there to save the rule of law.

  • Isn’t running several countries into the ground a sufficient basis for revoking Condi’s tenure?

  • Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) is already the longest serving senator in American history…

    Incidentally, the runner-up to Byrd in The Daily Show’s “Coot-Off,” Senator Ted Stevens, today became the longest-serving Republican US Senator, breaking Strom Thurmond’s record. Six Democrats outrank Stevens for seniority, though. Byrd, Kennedy, Inouye, uh… three others.

  • Any record for longevity set by Byrd is likely to be rather short-lived. Byrd has served only four more years in the Senate than Ted Kennedy, but while he was born in 1917, Kennedy was born in 1932. It is difficult imaging Byrd serving a full term if reelected in 2012; it is easier to imaging Kennedy completing a term if reelected in that year.

  • Given all of the “bushcrap” that Condi’s been part-&-parcel to, I’d be willing to hazard a guess that criminal investigations just might not be a good thing for “tenure….”

  • “She’s certainly flattered by all this, but she’s said that after this she’s going to go back to Stanford University, where she is still a tenured professor.”

    I wonder if Rice-for-brains has given any thought to the sort of welcome she’ll receive. Assuming she isn’t in jail as Steve suggests.

    In fact, that’s given me an idea for a biography title: Condoleeza Rice: From Stanford to Pen.

  • Yes. Please Condi run. You will be an awesome candidate. The Dems would run away from your awesomeness. Pleas run.

  • Republican Election Fraud new
    From: OpEdNews

    Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_press_re_070408__22commander__n_thief_22.htm

    April 8, 2007

    “Commander ‘N Thief”- Explosive new documentary presents evidence of fraud in 2004 election

    By Press Release

    Explosive New Documentary Presents Evidence of Fraud in 2004 Ohio Presidential Election

    Investigative journalist Greg Palast, author of the current best-selling Armed Madhouse and of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, introduces the documentary and also provides staggering information in the body of the film about the RNC’s purposeful and targeted strategies for disenfranchising millions of minority voters across the United States, including African-American soldiers serving in Iraq.

    Others appearing include Congressman John Conyers, Jr.; attorneys Cliff Arnebeck, John Bonifaz, Robert Fitrakis, Joseph Geller, Peter Peckarsky and Susan Truitt; President/CEO of Common Cause Chellie Pingree; computer science expert Professor Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins and Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., the leading public-advocacy investigator of voting fraud in the 2004 Ohio presidential election; statistical expert Professor Steven Freeman, Ph.D. of the University of Pennsylvania; consumer advocate against electronic voting Bev Harris; Franklin County, Ohio Director of Elections Matthew Damschroeder; and Ohio poll workers, concerned citizens, and community activists.

    In addition to the RNC’s nationwide campaign to disenfranchise American citizens from targeted minority groups, several other clearly fraudulent activities are identified: 3,600,780 votes were cast for president but never counted; in Ohio, forensic evidence has been uncovered of ballot switching in selected rural precincts and of double punched ballots used to invalidate legitimate votes in specific urban precincts; and there is strong statistical evidence that as many as five million votes nationally were shifted, subtracting five million votes from Kerry and adding five million votes to Bush to produce a swing of up to ten million votes in the officially reported result.

    The outcome of this series of sickening schemes is that the wrong candidate was sworn in as President of the United States. The evidence presented in this documentary, “Commander ‘N Thief,” should be seen as a warning that our democracy is now in peril and that ordinary citizens must act quickly and forcefully to restore honesty, transparency and verifiability to the American electoral system.

    The documentary also cites the absence of any comprehensive or sustained media investigation or coverage of the evidence of serious election-day problems and, with the notable exceptions of Greg Palast (BBC, Guardian/Observer) and Keith Olbermann (MSNBC), there has been no significant attention paid to this unsettling story in the national media.

    Former U.S. Senator, Ambassador and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern provides a powerful closing statement for the documentary pointing to the need for citizen action to insure a transparent, accessible, easy-to-use and entirely verifiable voting system that will protect and preserve our democracy over the long future.

    http://www.commander-n-thief.com/

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